The New Media Impartiality

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

‘Trust is the foundation of the BBC’s relationship with the public. The materials published today will help ensure employees uphold and protect the highest standards of BBC impartiality and maintain the trust audiences expect, demand and deserve.’

This is the basis on which the BBC’s impartiality guidelines rest, and the overall objective they seek to achieve. It states plainly that;

‘Impartiality should never be seen as a restriction, or as an inconvenience or anachronism. Accuracy, evidence, facts, transparency and informed judgements are constituent parts of an impartial approach’.

As my colleagues at Europinion have pointed out, the increasingly polarised nature of mainstream news media, and the growing threat of misinformation online, have made it vital for a productive political discourse to present information from an unbiased perspective. Given the BBC’s particular constraints as a public service broadcaster, its commitment to impartiality holds greater significance. Should the broadcaster fail to achieve this elevated standard of objectivity, it would risk losing legitimacy in the eyes of a nation required to fund its programmes via the license fee. In the wake of such crises of legitimacy, the BBC is engaged in a ceaseless debate as to the impartiality of its reporting, and the internal balances required to ensure its standards never slip.

Having understood the existential weight of impartiality for the BBC, it is interesting to analyse how the broadcaster defines the term, and to what extent it succeeds in sticking to it. According to Section 4.3.2 of its own guidelines;

‘Impartiality does not necessarily require the range of perspectives or opinions to be covered in equal proportions either across our output as a whole, or within a single programme, webpage or item. Instead, we should seek to achieve ‘due weight’. For example, minority views should not necessarily be given similar prominence or weight to those with more support or to the prevailing consensus.’

Such ‘prevailing consensus’, is naturally hard to pinpoint for a news organisation tasked with reporting a wide variety of information to both national and international audiences, making an interesting source of insight for the BBC’s implicit position on controversial topics. On such ‘controversial subjects’ the BBC pledges to ‘ensure a wide range of significant views and perspectives are given due weight and prominence, particularly when the controversy is active’. In addition, the broadcaster takes the stance that ‘opinion should be clearly distinguished from fact’ on such controversial stories.

One such controversial story, if not the controversial story of the 21st century and beyond, is the Israel/ Palestine conflict, and most recently the Israeli Defence Force’s assault on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after Hamas’ own offensive on October 7th 2023. This makes it an interesting case study; firstly for analysing the extent to which the BBC has abided by its own commitment to impartiality and unbiased reporting, and secondly for prompting a broader discussion surrounding journalistic responsibility in the face of injustice.

Given the vast amount of coverage this historic episode of the decades-old conflict has received, I will stick to an analysis of the BBC’s particular reporting on landmark developments in the story since October 7th (7/10). For a broader analysis of the BBC’s bias from October 7th 2023 to December 19th 2024, I suggest readers look into Owen Jones’s investigation into the topic linked here.

The first event I would like to highlight is the BBC’s coverage of UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Francesca Albanese, and her report accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians after 7/10. Within the first 6 lines of the article quoted below, the fundamental problem with the BBC’s approach to impartiality is revealed;

‘A UN human rights expert says she believes Israel has committed "acts of genocide" in Gaza.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, presented her report to UN member states in Geneva on Tuesday.

But Israel has already dismissed her findings.

This comes amid growing international pressure on Israel to stop the war or to do much more to protect civilians.’

A running trend in the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s attacks on the Gaza strip post-October 7th is this seemingly uncritical stance the broadcaster takes to allegations against Israel on the grounds it is committing human rights abuses. The structure of the article will be that of tit-for-tat, with one side’s allegations quickly followed by the assertion that Israel denies the veracity of any criticisms levied against them. The rest of the article does not stray from this structure. In exploring the Israeli response to Albanese’s accusation the BBC article states that:

‘Not surprisingly, Israeli diplomats are angry. Its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Meirav Eilon Shahar, described the report as "an obscene inversion of reality", and accused Ms Albanese of questioning Israel's right to exist.

Many Israelis, too, are likely to be shocked. And the suggestion of genocide, towards a state which was founded as a direct result of Nazi Germany's genocide of Jews, will cause deep offence.

In the wake of the 7 October attack, and the fact that so many Israeli families are still waiting for news of loved ones taken hostage, hearing such outspoken condemnation is hard.’

If anything else, these comments are strikingly redundant. Unsurprisingly, the Israeli state will reject the accusation that it is currently committing genocide, and many Israelis are unlikely to take this accusation with a smile, especially given the majority of the Israeli population broadly favour their government’s assault on Gaza. What is important here is not necessarily the opinion of either side, but the facts on the ground, and the reliability of the UN report, both points which are markedly absent from the BBC’s reporting. The article instead frames the debate on the basis of the opinions and perspectives of the individuals and organisations involved. Accusations made in Albanese’s report are quickly juxtaposed with an Israeli dismissal, without any attempt to uncover whether the rejection of the indictment is justified. The BBC’s takeaway seems to be that there are two sides, not that one is more reliable than the other, or whether one has a vested interest in rejecting claims made against its actions regardless of their veracity.

Interestingly, applying this level of nuance to the BBC’s reporting is not out of line with its impartiality guidelines, suggesting it is an active choice made on the part of the editorial team. On professional judgements and evidence-based assessments, the BBC clearly holds that;

‘The Political Editor may be able to suggest why a particular politician has acted in a certain way, or how they expect political developments to unfold; the North America editor may be able to ascribe motive to the President of the United States based on information or evidence they have gathered and using their professional experience to assess the situation.’

Such a bizarre manifestation of the BBC’s impartiality guidelines can also be observed in its coverage of the Israeli Security Cabinet’s approval of the plan to occupy Gaza indefinitely. Once again, the BBC seems unable to provide the necessary context and critical scrutiny required of an international news organisation tasked with presenting events in a factual manner.

Immediately, the BBC fails to recognise the illegality of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank after the 1967 6-day war when discussing this potential new chapter in Israel’s colonial history, instead presenting the issue as an equal 50-50 opinion split between the UN and the IDF:

Israel occupied Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war along with the West Bank. It unilaterally withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but the UN still regards Gaza as Israeli-occupied territory because it retained control of Gaza's shared border, airspace and shoreline.

Similarly, it fails to provide the necessary weight to criticisms of Israel’s aims in its assault on the Gaza strip:

However, critics say military action has failed to secure the return of the 59 remaining hostages - up to 24 of whom are believed to be alive - and have urged the government to strike a deal with Hamas.

These undisclosed ‘critics’ happen to be the Joe Biden’s secretary of state Anthony Blinken, who after a year and a half of Israel's military operation in Gaza resulting in the displacement of 90% of the strip’s 2.1 million people, declared unequivocally that ‘Hamas has recruited as many members as Israel has killed’.

Most egregiously of all however, is the BBC’s reporting of lacking humanitarian aid going into the Gaza strip. In the same article as the above quotes, the BBC chose to describe the situation as follows;

Israel cut off all deliveries of humanitarian aid and other supplies to Gaza aid on 2 March, two weeks before resuming its offensive.

According to the UN, the population is facing a renewed risk of hunger and malnutrition because warehouses are empty, bakeries have shut, and community kitchens are days away from running out of supplies.

The blockade has also cut off essential medicines, vaccines and medical equipment needed by Gaza's overwhelmed healthcare system.

The UN says Israel is obliged under international law to ensure supplies for Gaza's population, almost all of whom have been displaced. Israel says it is complying with international law and there is no shortage of aid.

Once again, any indictment of Israel’s actions by an international organisation is quickly counterbalanced by the assertion that Israel rejects such claims, and no time is spent attempting to discover whether Israel’s defense of its actions holds water. The BBC’s interpretation of its role as an unbiased news broadcaster seems to hold its journalistic responsibility to merely presenting the perspectives of both sides, and leaving it there.

Even objective facts are framed as an individual perspective on an ongoing debate:

There is growing international pressure on Israel to lift its blockade, with warnings that intentionally starving civilians is a potential war crime.

The use of the word ‘potential’ here is borderline insane. It is a fact that intentionally starving civilians is a war crime, making Israel’s decision to block humanitarian aid into Gaza a war crime. Such framing by the BBC of such an unequivocal reality leaves the reader wondering where this new impartiality has led the organisation, and whether it is a positive influence on news media.

‘The BBC needs to be factual’, that was the position given by football commentator Gary Lineker in conversation with Amol Rajan, host of the Today show on BBC News and previous editor of BBC News until 2023. Having analysed the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli military operation in Gaza, this exchange raises the question of whether, in its attempts to remain unbiased on controversial issues, the BBC is impeding any productive discourse from taking place. 

Put simply, presenting both sides as equals, by the BBC’s own admission, is not enough for coverage to be considered impartial. The first priority when reporting on contentious stories should be to highlight the facts, and provide nuance and context to each side’s position with reference to such facts. I understand that very rarely, if ever, do facts speak for themselves, and oftentimes the framing of facts as well as which ones are chosen influence the impact of a story to a greater degree than the truth claims themselves. However, the BBC’s current approach of walking on eggshells and taking little to no responsibility for the way it represents relevant perspectives on an issue, is not good enough.

I certainly do not envy the BBC’s position. Given the polarised nature of not only news outlets, but news consumers in the context of social media algorithms, any deviation from the BBC’s current non-position on any issue will inevitably see it embroiled in a new scandal threatening its legitimacy as a public service broadcaster. That is undoubtedly scary for the individuals charged with managing the broadcaster’s public image, and those responsible for its editorial decisions. However, if it is truly committed to maintaining its journalistic integrity, the BBC must simply ride out the storm, one which will incidentally not get any lighter if it stays on its current path. As comedian Bill Burr so eloquently put it; ‘you journalists need to get your balls back’.