Media bias

• selective presentation of material,
• choice of language to be sympathetic or unsympathetic to particular causes,
• or failure to fact-check sources which support the case to which they are sympathetic.

Media Bias Gaza 2023-24

Here is an article by Jonathan Cook, about media reporting of Gaza, including detail about the accuracy of media reporting of Hamas’ 7 October attack: How the Western media helped build the case for genocide in Gaza

BBC

I've seen more reported about the BBC than other media outlets. I don't know if that is because they are worse than the others, or just because we expect better of them. Anyway, here goes:

Here are some recent articles from Media Lens, Jonathan Cook, and others:

• Genocide in Gaza: The BBC’s Self-Inflicted ‘Trust Crisis’
• Erasing Gaza – Genocide, Denial And ‘The Very Bedrock Of Imperial Attitudes’
• The BBC isn’t failing. Its job is to obscure the UK’s partnership in Israel’s genocide
• Why BBC editors must one day stand trial for colluding in Israel's genocide, archived here
• Reversing The Truth – The Gaza ‘Ceasefire’ And British Complicity In Genocide , archived here (which mentions a new book by Peter Oborne, Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza)
• With Panorama’s hatchet job on Labour antisemitism, BBC has become the Tory’s attack dog, a detailed article by Jonathan Cook about a specific BBC program, titled “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?”, in July 2019

So here is an ever-increasing list of reasons to doubt the BBC's neutrality.

• (December 2023): Media research shows BBC is very far from ‘biased against Israel’
• (November 2024): More than 100 BBC staff accuse broadcaster of Israel bias in Gaza coverage, also reported in Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye. And here is the letter
• (November 2024): another letter from BBC journalists, reported (but not included) here: As Israel pounds Gaza, BBC journalists accuse broadcaster of bias
• (December 2024): The BBC's Civil War Over Gaza, by Owen Jones, based on interviews with 13 journalists and other BBC staffers

• (February 2025): Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone. This documentary was shown on the BBC, and at first made available on BBC iPlayer (a video on demand service), but then withdrawn:

  A campaign has sought to discredit the documentary using the father of 14-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri, one of the film’s child protagonists. Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri served as Gaza’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture, a civil service role concerned with food production.

  (see the open letter from 900+ media workers, 600+ leading British Jews call on BBC to restore documentary it deleted to please Israel lobby groups and a further response to the BBC).

  UPDATE (July 2025): The BBC has now published a review of the affair: BBC Review of Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone published

  I’m a former BBC newsreader – Gaza is the reason I resigned: Karishma Patel writes "The controversy over the pulling of the ‘How to Survive a Warzone’ documentary is a distraction from a much bigger problem my old employer has with impartiality", and is interviewed by Owen Jones here

  UPDATE Dec 2025: interviewed again by Owen Jones here, partly about the Prescott document. I must say, having glanced at it, it seemed weird:

  • it seemed to assume that differences between BBC Arabic and BBC News (English) were a cause for criticism of the former, not the latter
  • it discussed in detail various incidents of seven, four and nine (implied) Israeli civilians being killed, and the way these were covered. These in mid to late 2024 when, according to all reports, tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza had been killed

• (June 2025): The Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) has put out a report on BBC bias, BBC On Gaza-Israel: One Story, Double Standards with a link to the report here. Articles in Middle East Eye: BBC coverage of Israel's war on Gaza 'systematically biased against Palestinians' and War on Gaza: How the BBC sanitises Israel's genocide. Further articles mentioning an exchange at the launch of the report: Why BBC editors must one day stand trial for colluding in Israel's genocide, Burying Genocide – The BBC, Gaza And The Role Of The UK.

  And it is not a new issue: this article is about the media generally, not just the BBC: Al-Aqsa attacks: How the media gives Israel a free pass, referencing this CfMM report

• (June 2025): A film, "Gaza: Medics Under Fire" was produced for the BBC, but they sat on it for months, and are now not going to show it. Apparently it is being made available to the producers, Basement Films, to show. UPDATE: Latest news (28 June 2025): Channel 4 to show Gaza war crimes documentary rejected by BBC: It will be shown on Channel 4 at 10pm GMT on Wednesday, 2 July. (3 July) It is now described in "Gaza: Doctors Under Attack" shows the IDF is the world's most immoral army
• (July 2025) BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR: (quoting this) More than a hundred BBC employees have written a letter to the director general, Tim Davie, complaining that the Corporation has become a mouthpiece for Israel. The letter mentions the documentary "Gaza: Medics Under Fire", mentioned above. It also mentions (not by name) the documentary "How to Survive a Warzone", also mentioned above.
• (November 2025) Top boss at the BBC to leave his job: two top people at the BBC have resigned, after the BBC was criticised for the way it edited, or put together, a speech made by US President Donald Trump (apparently it put together two separate bits of a long speech). BBC leaders resigned for misrepresenting Trump, but not for misrepresenting Corbyn (archived here) discussed other failings of the BBC which apparently aren't regarded as equally serious.

  In The BBC is in crisis - for all the wrong reasons, archived here, Owen Jones points out

  The facts are that Donald Trump did incite an insurrection against those election results. It was completely stupid of Panorama to completely unnecessarily produce a misleading edit when there was more than enough evidence to establish this incontrovertible fact. And their misleading edit did not actually mislead audiences about that basic fact.

  The basic fact is - Trump incited an insurrection which sought to overturn the presidential election. Panorama did not mislead viewers in the sense of making them believe he did something he didn’t do.

  BBC news has a long record of disinformation. But this time it chose the wrong target, archived here, an article by Jonathan Cook about the BBC and what else it has done far worse, in which he wrote

  But Panorama, and the BBC more generally, have been exposed peddling far worse misinformation. In those cases, there have been precisely no consequences for such out-in-the-open journalistic abuses.

  The reason heads have rolled at the BBC this time are not because it made a journalistic blunder – it makes them all the time. It is because the corporation foolishly offered an open goal to the billionaire right and its media outlets.

  If anyone is falling for the manufactured “furore” over Panorama’s latest journalistic gaffe, there are examples of far graver malpractice by Panorama – especially on issues related to Israel and Palestine. These editorial crimes have barely caused a ripple, even after they were exposed.

• (January 2026) The BBC pushes the case for an illegal war on Iran with even bigger lies than Trump's, archived here
• (February 2026) Why is the BBC defending Trump over the Epstein allegations?, archived here
• And another article giving good examples of baised coverage from the BBC and others, Western media in Iran propaganda overdrive, archived here
• Some history, including the BBC actually lying, and destroying news-worthy material: The Auntie Blacklist: How the BBC’s “Christmas Tree Files” Rewrote Careers - and What It Means for Its Israel–Palestine Coverage Today, archived here

The Guardian

This article, Discontent Deepens Among Guardian Staff Over Palestine ‘Double Standard’ discusses its topic at length, including the Guardian's rejection of an article by Susan Abulhawa, now available here, and she is interviewed here, and writes on the same theme here, and also at an Oxford Union debate

This article concerns an article which was "nixed" from the Guardian at the last minute. It is now available here, A Surge in Suppression, by Dylan Saba.

The Media generally

• An article analysing media methods by Jonathan Cook, How the media tears up its own rulebook to hide Israel's atrocities, archived here

  In this article, Breaking free of media group-think is a scary, lonely journey. I know. I was forced to do it, archived here, Jonathan writes of his own experiences trying to get his writings published, and also those of others. Here are some of the specific articles his article mentions:

  • Epiphany at Beit Jala, by Donald Neff
  • Jenin riddle: Why did an Israeli soldier shoot a British official in the back?
  • The Killing of Iain Hook: Why the Time for Justice is Now
  • A cage for Palestinians: A 1,000-kilometer fence preempts the Road Map
  • CAMERA’s half-baked attack on Cook
  • Chris McGreal's two-part report: Worlds apart and Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria

• A perceptive comment by Caitlin Johnstone, in Sometimes The Media Ignoring A Major Story Becomes The Story, archived here, where she says

  Sometimes the biggest news story of the day is the fact that all mainstream news outlets are completely ignoring a major news story. It is interesting how often such instances involve the state of Israel.

• From MintPress News, Corporate Media Go All Out To Support The US-Israeli War on Iran, which gives several specific examples of media bias.
• An excellent article by Prof Karim / BettBeat Media, which starts out about the bombing of a primary school in Iran, but then goes on in detail about media bias, and government control of the media, generally: Orgy of Western Atrocities Will Not Stop Until the World Decolonizes Information, archived here
• An article about media control by the US government, also about the EU attacks on individual reporters or writers: Trump's Media Wars: How the Administration Weaponised Regulation to Break the Press, archived here
• Another article about the media's choice of words: How Western Media Sanitises And Sells The Crimes of Empire, archived here

The Voice of Hind Rajab

In the article Genocide isn't a mistake. Which is why the media can't tell you the truth about Gaza, archived here, discussed the film The Voice of Hind Rajab, "a devastating dramatised retelling of Israel’s slow-motion murder of a five-year-old in Gaza", would not be touched by movie distributors in the USA. UPDATE Jan 2026: Gaza war docudrama The Voice of Hind Rajab nominated for Academy Award

In that article, he also discusses his experience reporting on Israel for the Guardian.

See also I Heard “The Voice of Hind Rajab”, archived here

Likewise The Voice of Hind Rajab: The Film They Don’t Want You to See, archived here

I'm guessing that this is the movie which is referred to in this article, 11 Palestinians injured as Israeli forces raid Birzeit University in occupied West Bank, which suggests that the raid was to prevent a screening of the movie.

Karen Attiah

New York Times

The Intercept - Glenn Greenwald