Throughout the genocide in Palestine, the BBC’s role as an agent for the British ruling class has been undeniable. Far from its claimed impartial reporting, viewers and listeners have received unrelenting propaganda in defence of Zionism and British imperialism. From bias in favour of Zionist spokespersons and the covering up of war-crimes to the pulling of documentaries revealing genocide, the BBC has proved that it serves only as a mouthpiece for imperialism.
In June 2025, the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) released its report, BBC On Gaza-Israel: One Story, Double Standards. It found that, on every level, Palestinian lives mattered less within the BBC’s editorial framework. The Report found that coverage of the occupation was severely unbalanced. Despite the obvious fact that the death toll is at least 34 times higher for Palestinians, the BBC published more pieces on Israeli casualties and fatalities and used more humanising stories of Israeli ‘victims’ per death. The BBC also aims to delegitimise casualty numbers by attaching ‘Hamas-run’ onto almost every Palestinian source. This is a blatant attempt at discrediting the International Court of Justice’s ruling of genocide, by perpetuating a ‘two sides to every story’ rhetoric. However, there are no ‘two sides’ to ethnic cleansing.
The BBC employs a racist hierarchy of language against Palestinians to garner sympathy for the Zionist cause. ‘Massacre’ is used to describe Israeli deaths 18 times more often than to describe what the BBC refuses to call the genocide of Palestinians. Passive verbs are favoured to describe the murder of Palestinians, absolving the Zionist regime, and its supporters in Downing Street, from all blame. For the BBC, Israelis are ‘butchered’, whereas Palestinians simply ‘die’.
In an effort to suffocate the Palestine movement in Britain and abroad, the BBC reportedly pressured 38 pro-Palestine interviewees into condemning the Palestinian resistance. Conversely, it makes no effort to demand that Israel’s supporters criticise the IDF. Moreover, only 0.5% of articles reference Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestine, let alone the years of British colonisation that preceded it. This erasure of historical context is an effort to wipe clean the consciousness of the British public.
The BBC has rightly come under fire for removing the documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone from i-player. The film was pulled four days after being aired on BBC2 on 17 February, following an intense campaign headed by Zionist lobby groups. They complained that the narrator of the documentary, a 13-year-old Gazan boy, is the son of the deputy minister of agriculture within the political wing of Hamas, the officially elected governing body in Gaza. Abdullah al-Yazuri dreamt of studying journalism in Britain, where his father received his master’s degree and PhD. Instead, Abdullah has received death threats from pro-Israel thugs, and, even till now, the BBC has never reached out to ensure his wellbeing. More than 1,000 media professionals, including BBC staff, signed an open letter to condemn the BBC’s censorship and complicity with the Zionist regime.
In June 2025, the BBC refused to screen a further documentary, Gaza: Medics Under Fire, despite it having been editorially, journalistically, and legally approved for months. This was then instead screened by Channel 4 on 2 July.
There is a long history of such censorship. Back in 2002 the BBC refused to air the film, Palestine is Still the Issue, made by campaigning journalist John Pilger, fearing it would ‘incur the wrath of one of the most influential lobbies in the country’, so it was shown on ITV instead. Pilger stated that this was just ‘one example of pressure exerted on British journalists from Zionists and the Israeli embassy’.
A BBC spokesperson responded to the disgraceful findings of the CfMM report, stating that ‘throughout [the BBC’s] impartial reporting on the conflict, we have made clear the devastating human cost to civilians living in Gaza.’ Once again, their language betrays them, whether it’s the refusal to use ‘genocide’ in place of ‘conflict’, or the wordy ‘human cost to civilians’ rather than ‘ethnic cleansing’. Nevertheless, the BBC’s claims of impartiality are fictitious.
A BBC employee spoke to Middle East Eye journalists, indicating that the CfMM report has been widely discussed amongst BBC staff. According to the employee, the BBC has repeatedly pledged to carry out its own review of its Gaza coverage but has swept it under the rug so long that it has now ‘been beaten to it’. The employee spoke of ‘an insane culture of fear’, centred around ‘a desire to follow the state line’, clearly demonstrating the BBC’s role as a propaganda arm of the British state.
In December 2024 journalist Owen Jones interviewed 13 current and former BBC staffers for Dropsite News. Employees agreed that the Broadcaster had a structural bias for pro-Israeli reporting, and pointed towards Raffi Berg, the BBC News Online Middle East Editor, as a key figure enforcing Zionist bias. Jones asked Berg for comment in his investigation, however Berg declined, opting instead to hire Mark Lewis, former director of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) in a bid to sue Jones. UKLFI is directly involved in the criminalisation of the Palestine movement in Britain, including of the SOAS 2. It is clear that the BBC feels threatened by the growing realisation that their reporting is deceitful, racist, and imperialist.
This is not unique to the BBC. Every mainstream media outlet in Britain could be charged with similar, if not worse, offences. Even The Guardian, considered left-wing, perpetuates the racist use of language towards Palestinians, and consistently smears the Palestinian resistance. The BBC claims, and is widely believed to be, nonpartisan. It is a publicly owned corporation, funded by its own consumers, yet it operates as the world’s best hidden propaganda machine for the British ruling class.
The compliance of the British media with the Zionist regime, and racist and imperialist British state shows the importance of supporting media outlets like Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! which are truly independent of the ruling class.
Rúibín Bhreathnach
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 307, August/September 2025
