More than 8,000 complaints have been made about the BBC’s coverage of the Gaza war since Hamas attacked Israel in October, with accusations of bias split evenly in either direction.
Concerns were raised about the perception of bias in the corporation’s reporting of the conflict, which has seen tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, as top BBC staff faced questions from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Wednesday.
The broadcaster’s director of editorial policy and standards David Jordan told the committee of MPs: “As of this morning, we had just under 4,000 people complaining that our… output, rather, our coverage, was biased against Israel and over 4,000 that was biased in favour.
“They are actually pretty similar, which reflects the differing opinions in the country as a whole on that.”
BBC director-general Tim Davie was asked about BBC Arabic staff retweeting remarks that were called “essentially pro-Hamas” by Conservative MP Damian Green.
Davie said: “Some of those tweets that we’ve seen are unacceptable, and we have taken action and we’ll continue to take action; whether I can convince you that it will never happen again… of course not.
“We are robust and I think we’re doing the fair thing, we’re acting fairly and judiciously and it’s not easy.
“I mean, you’re seeing it around the world, every news organisation, every cultural institution as you know is under enormous pressure… this is enormously fraught.”
Davie ‘very proud’ of BBC Arabic service amid Gaza war
Davie said some staff had been told to leave the corporation due to their comments on social media.
He added that he was “very proud” of the BBC Arabic service.
Davie was also asked about the BBC’s reporting of a submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by South Africa alleging that Israel breached the Genocide Convention with its military offensive against Hamas. Ten viewers had complained that the BBC “underreported” South Africa’s case.
He said he gets “significant feedback from either side”, and added: “Overall I think we have been pretty robust in covering the ICJ rulings. We’ve been in a reasonable position.”
Jordan told the committee that South Africa and Israel’s submissions receiving different amounts of coverage on different days “only happened on our UK output”, due to the need to cover a hearing about the Post Office scandal.
“When news looked at it in retrospect, they did think that perhaps they did make a mistake by not making the two live coverages similar or the same, but all the other coverage was similar or the same,” he said.
Jordan added that an update to editorial guidelines will be available for publication “hopefully before the general election”.
Israel has denied the accusations by South Africa saying they are “wholly unfounded in fact and law, morally repugnant, and represent an abuse both of the Genocide Convention and of the court itself” in court documents.
New guidance on social media for BBC employees was published in September, which said they must not bring the corporation “into disrepute” and are required to be respectful in public.
Davie was asked about the Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer saying that the BBC is biased “on occasion”.
He said the BBC is able to “steer the course amongst the noise” despite “the storms of social media” being “very demanding”.
However, he also said he “worries” about public institutions losing trust in the current social climate.
No BBC ‘institutional bias’ on trans issues
Davie was asked by MPs about an impartiality complaint being upheld against BBC Radio 4’s Today programme presenter Justin Webb after he said that “trans women, in other words males”.
Davie said that the transgender issue was “an area of controversy” and the BBC does not have “institutional bias” in this area.
“We don’t have no-go areas in the BBC, to do that we do demand of our journalists to keep within our editorial guidelines,” he said. “We have to be kind and caring in this, and listen to people and be nice.”
Davie dismissed reports that he had been “deluged” with emails criticising the executive complaints unit for upholding a complaint about Webb.
“This is being whipped up as well around us in a way that is deeply, deeply damaging to civilised debates about these topics,” he said.
Pressure on programmes like Question Time is ‘ferocious’
Davie also said that political debate show Question Time is trying to be “calmly” balanced in a “polarised” world.
He told the committee: “The pressure is ferocious from every side… this is a more polarised time, I talked about this, everyone wants to proscribe intent, you know there are people who think we’ve got an agenda to the right and an agenda to the left, we’re woke warriors on one side, we’re small-c conservatives on the other.
“I can tell you that if you go and meet the editors of programmes like Question Time, I’m fiercely proud of them, because what they’re trying to do is calmly get this right.”
Davie said the corporation is “not being lent on” by political actors and the BBC does not make decisions due to outside pressure.
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