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BBC repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism, report finds

Israel instead portrayed by broadcaster as militaristic and aggressive nation, British lawyer-led research claims

The BBC has repeatedly downplayed Palestinian terrorism while presenting Israel as a militaristic and aggressive nation, a report has found.
The corporation’s coverage of Israel suggests the Jewish state faces “no substantial threat”, thereby “delegitimising its decision to prosecute a war”, the report claims.
By contrast the BBC’s coverage of the military strength and actions of Hamas, the terror group which runs Gaza, are given “far less weight”, the research led by British lawyer Trevor Asserson found.
It claims that BBC correspondents featured in a podcast series which followed the Oct 7 attacks had “a tendency to portray Israel as a military aggressor” and that by contrast “they tend to portray Palestinians, and Hamas, as militarily weak …  creating a ‘victim/aggressor’ narrative”.
Other examples include a BBC report on Oct 9 last year, two days after the attacks which killed 1,200 Israelis, which described the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) as “lavishly-funded and prestigious”, and another on Oct 16 stating: “Israel’s response in the days since the war was another example of its indifference to the suffering of the Palestinian people”.
The Asserson report analysed the BBC’s coverage during a four-month period beginning Oct 7, 2023 – the day Hamas carried out a massacre in southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 251 into Gaza as hostages.
A team of around 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists contributed to the research, which also used artificial intelligence to calculate the “sympathy ratio” of Israel-Hamas war coverage and analyse nine million words of BBC output.
Earlier this week The Telegraph revealed that the report found the BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during the height of the Israel-Hamas war.
In one example highlighted by the report, a BBC Arabic roundup of newspaper coverage of the conflict last November contrasted a photograph of a Gazan girl being cradled in an adult’s arms after an air raid with a photograph of an ultra-orthodox Jew carrying a machine gun.
But the report’s authors state that the article failed to explain that the Jew carrying a machine gun was returning from the funeral of a Jewish college student shot by Palestinians in the West Bank. The report also points out the photograph was taken in October 2000, more than two decades before the Oct 7 attacks that prompted Israel’s current military response.
At the same time the BBC’s coverage tends to excuse or downplay acts of terror by Palestinians, the report claims.
It says this is achieved by describing Hamas as “gunmen”, “fighters” or “militants”, rather than “terrorists”, and by describing Hamas as a “resistance” organisation, thereby “indicating that the way they behave may be justified or explained based on the actions of the aggressor (Israel)”.
Researchers found that the corporation’s coverage frequently failed to mention the role terrorism has played in causing the conflict in the region and preventing long-term peace.
The effect of the BBC’s coverage is to “place part of the blame for Oct 7 on Israel”, as well as to downplay the massacre that took place that day, the report states.
It goes on to claim that the BBC’s choice of language also tends to minimise the suffering of Israelis compared with that of Palestinians.
On the BBC News at Ten on Nov 1 2023, Gazan civilians were described as being “starved, traumatised and bombed to death”, compared with the more neutral description of Israelis “still in shock over the Oct 7 attacks”.
The report also claims that the BBC tends to give fewer details about Israeli victims of the conflict, with the effect of “dehumanising” its casualties compared with Palestinian victims.
It points out that a picture of 28-year-old Israeli hostage Noa Argamani used by the corporation on Jan 1 this year showed her smiling before the war, rather than the distressing image of her being abducted on a motorcycle on Oct 7 which was seen around the world.
A Jan 15 article about the murder of a 70-year-old Israeli woman and a terror attack in Israel gave little detail about her or the other victims.
Furthermore, BBC coverage tends to “glorify and glamorise” Hamas, according to the report, which highlights how BBC correspondents described “Hamas’s military prowess” and “astonishingly granular understanding of Israeli security”.
Three days after the Oct 7 attack, the BBC published an article about Hamas which described the “spectacular attack” as “the most ambitious operation Hamas has ever launched”, with the reporter adding that “it was frankly astonishing”.
The report states: “BBC Arabic content is markedly exaggerated in the trend towards glorifying Hamas, who are regularly depicted as ‘Robin Hood’ style heroes, with the best interests of the people at heart.”
A BBC spokesman said: “We have serious questions about the methodology of this report, particularly its heavy reliance on AI to analyse impartiality, and its interpretation of the BBC’s editorial guidelines.
“We don’t think coverage can be assessed solely by counting particular words divorced from context. We are required to achieve due impartiality, rather than the ‘balance of sympathy’ proposed in the report, and we believe our knowledgeable and dedicated correspondents are achieving this, despite the highly complex, challenging and polarising nature of the conflict.
“However, we will consider the report carefully and respond directly to the authors once we have had time to study it in detail.”

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