BBC staff: we're forced to do pro-Israel PR

A devastating letter signed by over 100 BBC journalists underlines one of the great scandals of our age

This is a devastating intervention. 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.

It was also signed by 300 other journalists and media professionals: one of them was yours truly. The BBC employees, as you would expect, are all anonymous, because otherwise they would face grave consequences to their careers.

The letter says:

We’re writing to express our concerns over opaque editorial decisions and censorship at the BBC on the reporting of Israel/Palestine. We believe the refusal to broadcast the documentary ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’ is just one in a long line of agenda driven decisions. It demonstrates, once again, that the BBC is not reporting “without fear or favour” when it comes to Israel.

It goes on to note that the decision not to broadcast the investigation was taken by BBC management despite the content being signed off in accordance with BBC guidelines and editorial policy, which it says “Appears to be a political decision”, adding that the BBC response shows the organisation “is crippled by the fear of being perceived as critical of the Israeli government.”

This is a letter which passed every single BBC internal check. No factual errors are alleged. The only other BBC documentary which focused on the apocalyptic plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza was taken down as a result of a hysterical pro-Israel campaign - because the father of the child narrator’s son had a junior technocratic position in the Hamas administration. Irrelevant, given the narrator’s words were written for him by the documentary producers.

The letter emphasises that the signatories are not “asking the BBC to take a side”, but just to allow BBC journalists to “do their jobs in delivering facts transparently and with due context”. They note one striking failure:

As an organisation we have not offered any significant analysis of the UK government's involvement in the war on Palestinians. We have failed to report on weapons sales or their legal implications. These stories have instead been broken by the BBC’s competitors.

This is, by the way one of many striking scandalous failures on the part of the BBC, which is a public service broadcaster which is duty bound to hold the British government to account and has failed to do so.

And this is the really crucial allegation. The letter says:

This hasn’t happened by accident, rather by design. Much of the BBC’s coverage in this area is defined by anti-Palestinian racism.

This is exactly it. There hasn’t even been a pretence by the BBC that Palestinian life has even the fraction of the worth of an Israeli life. When I did my detailed investigation into BBC coverage for Drop Site News at the end of the last year, I worked with data journalists who used incontrovertible statistics to show how this is the case.

The letter mentions a crucial name. It says:

The inconsistent manner in which guidance is applied draws into focus the role of Sir Robbie Gibb, on the BBC Board and BBC’s Editorial Standards Committee. We are concerned that an individual with close ties to the Jewish Chronicle, an outlet that has repeatedly published anti-Palestinian and often racist content, has a say in the BBC's editorial decisions in any capacity, including the decision not to broadcast ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’.

Sir Robbie Gibb is a striking case study. The brother of a Tory minister, he joined the BBC as a political researcher after he graduated, before becoming chief of staff for Tory Shadow Chancellor Francis Maude. He then returned to the BBC as deputy editor of the flagship current affairs programme Newsnight, then became the editor for BBC political programmes such as Daily Politics, where he worked closely with its main presenter, Andrew Neil, then chairman of the hard right Spectator magazine. He then went off in 2017 to become director of communications for the Tory prime minister Theresa May. He then returned to the BBC, joining its Board.

You can be forgiven if this revolving door between the Tories and BBC has left you dizzy.

He was singled out by the likes of former Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis who said he was an “active agent of the Conservative party” who was shaping the Corporation’s news output by acting “as the arbiter of BBC impartiality”.

In 2020, he led a consortium bid to buy The Jewish Chronicle, a newspaper which rather than doing what is vitally important - offering media representation for Britain’s Jewish community - has acted as a zealous cheerleader of the Israeli state, and indeed that newspaper has pushed, as the letter notes, hideously anti-Palestinian racist output.

It is absolutely remarkable that this man has the power and influence he does at the BBC. Can you imagine someone with left-wing and pro-Palestinian connections having this power and influence? There is more chance of the Moon turning into a giant panda called Flibble.

As the letter notes:

This conflict of interest highlights a double standard for BBC content makers who have themselves experienced censorship in the name of ‘impartiality’. In some instances staff have been accused of having an agenda because they have posted news articles critical of the Israeli government on their social media. By comparison, Gibb remains in an influential post with little transparency regarding his decisions despite his ideological leanings being well known. We can no longer ask license fee payers to overlook Gibbs’ ideological allegiances.

The letter notes that the BBC’s reporting on Israel and Palestine “falls short of our own editorial standards”, with “a gulf between the BBC’s coverage of what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank and what our audiences can see is happening via multiple credible sources including human rights organisations, staff at the UN and journalists on the ground.”

Which is why the letter makes the incendiary claim:

All too often it has felt that the BBC has been performing PR for the Israeli government and military.

Note that over a hundred journalists who spend their lives working for the BBC have stated their agreement with this.

They state that: “We have been forced to conclude that decisions are made to fit a political agenda rather than serve the needs of audiences.”

They go on to note their extreme concern about BBC reporting on the issue “falling short of the standards our audiences expect”, adding that:

We believe the role of Robbie Gibb, both on the Board, and as part of the Editorial Standards Committee, is untenable. We call on the BBC to do better for our audiences and recommit to our values of impartiality, honesty and reporting without fear or favour.

Other than those BBC journalists, signatories include the actors Juliet Stevenson, Khlaid Abdalla, Zawe Ashton, Miriam Margoyles.

Now BBC insiders have some choice things to say. Once says:

At the BBC, the strength of feeling against Gibb is palpable.

In corridors at New Broadcasting House, staff confide in each other about the illogical decisions reached by management and the role that Gibb has to play.

We often feel we are in an abusive relationship with the BBC, in which we are gaslit and pacified.”

They go on to say:

We are exhausted by the double standards and the suspension of editorial standards. For many staff this has shattered any notion of fairness.

We frequently console in each other about how this has been allowed to happen. We believe the BBC will not be able to deliver on its commitment to fairness and due impartiality whilst Gibb is in post.

Another notes:

For more than a year now we’ve been aware that the BBC’s news output is out of step with reality. Audiences are being asked not to believe their own eyes and ears.

Anyone with a phone has seen the footage coming out of Gaza and the West Bank yet BBC News has tied itself in knots with notions of ‘complexity’.

Why have we taken a clear position on Ukraine and Russia when we fail to confidently assert facts when it comes to the Palestinian people? Robbie Gibb is at least part of the answer.

We raised these concerns so many times and we have not been listened to. We are speaking out because we must serve audiences better.

Well indeed, and here is just another example of the biggest scandal of Western journalism of our time.

What the BBC and other organisations did is either completely erase the statements of genocidal and criminal intent made by Israeli leaders and officials, or bury them, and indeed refuse to explain the genocidal and criminal nature of those statements. These statements proved the most accurate roadmap for what Israel would go on to do, and yet the BBC completely misled their audiences about Israel’s intent, treating these statements as though they were being issued in a parallel universe, and instead zoning in on deceitful statements issued by Israeli officials designed for Western audiences.

The BBC repeatedly framed their stories around the false statements and claims of the Israeli state, treating them as credible despite the overwhelming evidence of Israel lying over and over again and indeed committing every single war crime and crime against humanity under the sun.

Palestinian voices received much less coverage and were prosecuted as though they were in the dock in a way pro-Israel voices are not.

Atrocities and war crimes have been ignored and whitewashed. Studies exposing war crimes have been ignored or given precious little coverage.

Palestinian life has been treated as having infinitely less worth than Israeli life, while emotive terms such as ‘massacre’ are reserved for Israeli victims rather than Palestinian victims, and humanising words are proportionately used far more for Israeli victims than Palestinian victims

While sentences such as ‘Hamas run health ministry’ are woven in as standard to undermine faith in the death toll in Gaza, basic facts like the International Criminal court issuing arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister are not.

The fact there is a consensus amongst genocide scholars, including Israeli genocide scholars, that Israel is committing genocide, has been suppressed, with those scholars being erased.

We could go on.

This is the biggest scandal of Western journalism of our age. These BBC journalists have spoken out. Other journalists should do the same.