Offending or over-accusing sides of this conflict is a very asymmetric risk. Misrepresent Palestinians negatively and you may eventually get an angry, vague letter - with a quarter of signatories doing so anonymously. Misrepresent Israelis negatively and you get very powerful and well-organised protests. BBC is sadly doing the rational thing of staying clear of suggesting Israel may be doing some bad things. It is a Corporation after all and so acts in corporate ways.
But this is also the example coming to them from the top. On the occasions where Israel has clearly committed egregious violations, such as shooting at people massed at the aid dispensal locations or the medics who then got buried in shallow graves, Israel gets barely a whimper of criticism from European politicians - and apparently full-throated cheering and support from the US. The ICC arrest warrant is as forgotten as last year's snow.
So why are we surprised the BBC doesn't want to stick its head above the parapet?
philipallstar · 2h ago
> Misrepresent Palestinians negatively and you may eventually get an angry, vague letter - with a quarter of signatories doing so anonymously
No, you get "fiery but mostly peaceful" campus protests and every BBC interviewer asking you in the perfectly aggrieved RP tones why you hate children so much.
raxxorraxor · 52m ago
There was a study about negative bias towards Israel at the BBC. It contradicts your explanation.
Do you have a single example of a protest you try to summon here? I very much doubt it.
alkyon · 3m ago
Do you mean a report by the Israeli-based lawyer Trevor Asserson, maybe?
If so, then you're spreading misinformation. This is not a study. It's a report sponsored by Israel. It has flawed methodology and they made heavy use of ChatGPT.
I rest my case.
omnimus · 1h ago
I think what is upsetting is that BBC is public service broadcaster where the whole point is that they are financially independent of government so they can do whatever journalism their employees deem necessary. They should be insulated from political pressure as much as possible.
Self censoring their own documentary does not align with that.
zimpenfish · 1h ago
> the whole point is that they are financially independent of government
Hasn't been the case for a long time though, eg. [0]
I doubt anyone’s surprised in here. I’m certainly not. Angry? Absolutely. Sick to my stomach? Yep. But surprised? Not even a little.
dgellow · 2h ago
> So why are we surprised the BBC doesn't want to stick its head above the parapet?
Whenever a group publicly criticizes a behavior, you see the rhetorical question “Why are you surprised?”, and that feels dismissive and disingenuous.
Yes, BBC has some reasons to behave the way they do, sure. It’s really not relevant to the points being brought.
Every actor has reasons to behave. People are critical of the behavior, whatever the actor’s incentives are. Because a behavior feels more logical or rational it shouldn’t be discussed? If you would answer negatively then what’s the point of asking your question? Is it just to express your cynicism of that whole situation?
rich_sasha · 2h ago
> Yes, BBC has some reasons to behave the way they do, sure. It’s really not relevant to the points being brought
My point is they are responding to external constraints shaped by the broader society - the very same group who seems to put up with Israel's outrageous stunts. To angst about the first but not the second is the illogical bit to me. The BBC is not quite a weathervane, but like so many commentators in this space, is so heavily constrained in what it can do that it's meaningless to focus on the actions, not the constraints.
It's like when people are shocked that politicians are not morally superior to the average person in the society that raised them. You sample from a group, you're going to mimick its distribution.
So I am not surprised or shocked how the BBC is acting. I am surprised and shocked that the many societies (Europe, America, ME) seems to accept this situation, as a root cause if you like.
ndsipa_pomu · 1h ago
> So why are we surprised the BBC doesn't want to stick its head above the parapet?
Well, I'm not surprised by that as I've seen the way that the BBC approaches "impartiality" (e.g. have experts explaining one side of an issue and then allow non-experts to spout falsehoods which aren't challenged despite them being demonstrably false).
As a license-fee payer, I detest the way that the BBC is ignoring its journalistic duty to present the facts in a non-partisan manner or at least attempt to do so. However, they consistently use different language to report on the different sides of the war.
gruez · 6h ago
Coming from an outsider, the letter is frustratingly vague. The only concrete allegation is the pulling of the documentary "Gaza: Medics Under Fire", but without a statement from BBC explaining why they pulled it, it's basically impossible from an outsider to know whether censorship is indeed happening or not. The rest of the letter basically down to a he-said-she-said over bias/censorship happening. Owen's article doesn't really add much either, seeming to take everything at face value and then using that to slam the BBC. This is all great if you're already predisposed to think the MSM has a pro-Israel bias, but otherwise leaves you at least confused.
Is there another source that does a better job at substantiating the claim that BBC has a pro-Israel bias?
"Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and unquestioning acceptance of Israeli PR. This has allegedly been overseen by BBC Middle East Editor and apparent Binyamin Netanyahu admirer, Raffi Berg, who is accused by anonymous journalists of “micromanaging” the section." - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra...
"Comprehensive new research finds the BBC coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is systematically biased against Palestinians and fails to reach standards of impartiality.
Analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) shows Israeli deaths are given 33 times more coverage per fatality, and both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards. BBC content was found to consistently shut down allegations of genocide." - https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/16/bbc-systematically-biased...
The tagline is "As many question BBC’s coverage, three academics tell openDemocracy why they don't think the broadcaster is impartial", which I think sums up the article accurately. That doesn't seem to add much aside from proving that there are outsiders (impartial or biased, we don't really know) that agree with one side. It shouldn't be surprising that with any culture war issue, than you can find some academics to be on your side.
Skimming the article, the methodology used is very questionable. For instance:
>Despite Gaza suffering 34 times more casualties than Israel, the BBC ran almost equal numbers of humanising victim profiles.
If you think 1 death = 1 coverage, then clearly BBC is biased. However, 1 death = 1 coverage is clearly not how anyone expect the media should operate. How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting? Does that mean the BBC has a anti-Sudan bias? Moreover should each death really merit equal coverage? Would it be biased if BBC ran more pieces about the sad plight of Ukrainian soldiers compared to Russian soldiers?
>It was also found to have attached “Hamas-run health ministry” to Palestinian casualty figures in 1,155 articles – almost every time the Palestinian death toll was referenced across BBC articles.
Why is this an issue? In the Russsia-Ukranie war for instance, if you cite casualty figures from Russia, it's pretty obvious that it's from the Kremlin. The Gaza Health Ministry is actually Hamas run, and that fact isn't readily apparent.
There are other serious allegations made in that piece that I don't have expertise to comment on, but the above two snippets don't inspire much confidence.
t-3 · 6h ago
>>It was also found to have attached “Hamas-run health ministry” to Palestinian casualty figures in 1,155 articles – almost every time the Palestinian death toll was referenced across BBC articles.
> Why is this an issue? In the Russsia-Ukranie war for instance, if you cite casualty figures from Russia, it's pretty obvious that it's from the Kremlin. The Gaza Health Ministry is actually Hamas run, and that fact isn't readily apparent.
Hamas is the legitimate government of Palestine. "Health Ministry" would be just as accurate and much less biased than "Hamas-run Health Ministry". The implicit accusation of bias against them by emphasizing the identity of the source is also extremely glaring when put into context; nearly every outside observer that's not an Israeli or US government organization to analyze the data and numbers has come to the conclusion that the "Hamas-run Health Ministry"'s number are an undercount.
gruez · 5h ago
>Hamas is the legitimate government of Palestine.
They might have defacto control, but most countries don't recognize Hamas as the "legitimate government".
>Hamas is the legitimate government of Palestine. "Health Ministry" would be just as accurate and much less biased than "Hamas-run Health Ministry". The implicit accusation of bias against them by emphasizing the identity of the source is also extremely glaring when put into context; nearly every outside observer that's not an Israeli or US government organization to analyze the data and numbers has come to the conclusion that the "Hamas-run Health Ministry"'s number are an undercount.
So if the BBC was covering the election in Venezuela, would it be "biased" to point out that the election results were from the "government controlled" electoral commission, and that it was packed with Maduro's cronies? After all, the electoral commission is probably the "legitimate" authority for counting votes, so why point out it's staffed by government cronies? Just say that the opposition claims that their guy won, but the electoral authority said Maduro won. End of story. Or is it only biased if the journalist thinks something fishy is going on (ie. the vote was rigged in favor of Maduro)? How would we adjudicate this? This just inevitably devolves into "if you support Israel then saying anything bad about them is bias, and if you oppose Israel then saying anything good about them is bias".
hn-shithole · 6h ago
> How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting? Does that mean the BBC has a anti-Sudan bias?
Yes.
gruez · 6h ago
Yet, when was the last time 100+ concerned journalists penned a open letter saying that we needed more coverage of the genocide in Sudan? It's all good if it's some sort of principle that's being applied evenly, but it's pretty clear in the case of the Israel vs Palestine conflict, most people are invoking that principle are doing it only when it suits them.
Alive-in-2025 · 4h ago
No. pointing out genocide, attacks that kill hungry or starving people trying to get food is not some special unusual mean thing. It's something that all decent peoples should be against. I'm against all attacks on the innocent. It doesn't need to be repeated, but I'll do it - I was against the attacks by Hamas on Israel too.
philipallstar · 2h ago
Even calling this genocide is biased. Going into a country to kill the people from it of a race, and then texting celebratory texts that you killed some of that race, and capturing people of that race, is at least attempted genocide, if not completed.
Retaliating to that to get your hostages back and to stop the endless attacks on your race is not genocide.
WaxProlix · 4h ago
Aside from the fact that nobody is lionizing a group in Sudan (vs say Israel), and so there's no direct comparison here?
One major difference that I see - though of course I can't speak for the journalists - is that my country and tax dollars are directly involved in this conflict. Every child who burns alive, every man woman and child raped in an Israeli camp, every doctor or medic killed by targeted drone or sniper fire is in a sense in my name. I'm not saying Sudanese political instability isn't impacted by western actions, but this conflict is very real for a lot of people because of a direct, material involvement.
Journalists maybe feel this way, too?
I do also think this is a pretty straightforward distinction, and suspect your bringing up a fundamentally different conflict to say something like "well you think Israeli deaths get too much coverage in this war, why do Sudanese deaths not get very much?" is weird and borderline disingenuous.
maeil · 2h ago
> However, 1 death = 1 coverage is clearly not how anyone expect the media should operate.
In armed conflict far away from the country in question, comparatively for each side, yes, both sides' deaths getting similar coverage is how one should expect the media to operate.
If Chile and Peru get into a war tomorrow, the expectation would absolutely be that coverage of deaths by the BBC would be similar for both.
>How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting?
The obvious key difference here is that in those wars both sides of those conflicts do still tend to get similar coverage per death; which is almost none. At the very least there's not orders of magnitudes difference. Not sure how you missed this, but it doesn't inspire much confidence.
> Would it be biased if BBC ran more pieces about the sad plight of Ukrainian soldiers compared to Russian soldiers?
No, as Russia is a reasonable threat to the UK whereas Hamas is clearly not.
tareqak · 2h ago
> However, 1 death = 1 coverage is clearly not how anyone expect the media should operate.
How often should the media report deaths? Each time a group of people die? Each time bodies are found?
> How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting? Does that mean the BBC has a anti-Sudan bias?
Are you familiar with the saying, “when a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, then does it make a sound”?
> Moreover should each death really merit equal coverage?
I would assume that an individual or a group of people that aspire towards neutrality, fairness, and humanitarian principles would treat one life as the same as another.
>> Our mission is "to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain".
>> The Charter also sets out our five public purposes:
>> 1. To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them
>> The BBC should provide duly accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world. Its content should be provided to the highest editorial standards. It should offer a range and depth of analysis and content not widely available from other United Kingdom news providers, using the highest calibre presenters and journalists, and championing freedom of expression, so that all audiences can engage fully with major local, regional, national, United Kingdom and global issues and participate in the democratic process, at all levels, as active and informed citizens.
>> 2. To support learning for people of all ages
>> The BBC should help everyone learn about different subjects in ways they will find accessible, engaging, inspiring and challenging. The BBC should provide specialist educational content to help support learning for children and teenagers across the United Kingdom. It should encourage people to explore new subjects and participate in new activities through partnerships with educational, sporting and cultural institutions.
>> 3. To show the most creative, highest quality and distinctive output and services
>> The BBC should provide high-quality output in many different genres and across a range of services and platforms which sets the standard in the United Kingdom and internationally. Its services should be distinctive from those provided elsewhere and should take creative risks, even if not all succeed, in order to develop fresh approaches and innovative content.
>> 4. To reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all of the United Kingdom’s nations and regions and, in doing so, support the creative economy across the United Kingdom
>> The BBC should reflect the diversity of the United Kingdom both in its output and services. In doing so, the BBC should accurately and authentically represent and portray the lives of the people of the United Kingdom today, and raise awareness of the different cultures and alternative viewpoints that make up its society. It should ensure that it provides output and services that meet the needs of the United Kingdom’s nations, regions and communities. The BBC should bring people together for shared experiences and help contribute to the social cohesion and wellbeing of the United Kingdom. In commissioning and delivering output the BBC should invest in the creative economies of each of the nations and contribute to their development.
>> 5. To reflect the United Kingdom, its culture and values to the world
>> The BBC should provide high-quality news coverage to international audiences, firmly based on British values of accuracy, impartiality, and fairness. Its international services should put the United Kingdom in a world context, aiding understanding of the United Kingdom as a whole, including its nations and regions where appropriate. It should ensure that it produces output and services which will be enjoyed by people in the United Kingdom and globally.
> Would it be biased if BBC ran more pieces about the sad plight of Ukrainian soldiers compared to Russian soldiers?
Yes, it would be biased in the same way that the BBC runs more pieces about Ukrainian civilians than it does about Palestinian civilians. There are likely more published BBC articles about Ukrainian civilians with photographs, audio, video, and documents than there are about Palestinian civilians.
There is BBC staff reporting from Ukraine and/or with the help of Ukrainian media affiliates and Ukrainian sources.
Where are the BBC reporters in Gaza?
philipallstar · 2h ago
You're bringing logic to a gunfight.
engine_y · 6h ago
Yes... that's what the Muslim media monitoring organization says.
It's like the olden Google days - where people were doing SEO campaigns measured in deepness of the links...
chvid · 7h ago
This goes on all over western media not only the bbc.
tclover · 2h ago
Western propaganda lies not only about this, corruption in the EU reaches incredible proportions, censorship, violations of freedom of speech, but Putin is always to blame.
somename9 · 4h ago
It’s pretty obvious why this is the case when you look into the ownership/leadership of media companies. Still incredible that most are not aware of this.
Getting downvoted, but no one is saying I’m wrong.
ThrowawayTestr · 2h ago
I love that anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are back in vogue
Fake terror plots became criminal currency for a while in Australia.
k4rli · 2h ago
Which part was antisemitic and which part was the conspiracy? The ownership is factual.
defrost · 2h ago
What are the 'facts' about ownership "all over western media"?
engine_y · 7h ago
I read the article but not sure which pro Israeli editorials the BBC has published.
My experience is quite the opposite with BBC having a clear anti war stance.
molteanu · 6h ago
It's about the careful wording, about who gets to be on the spotlight, about who gets to call the other side a tyrant, an evil state, about saying things like "regime change" and no-one batting an eye. Slowly, but surely, you form an opinion as to who the bad actor is as you've seen or read about its bad behaviour (but not of the behavior of the other party)
Most interestingly, it's about who holds the microphone and is allowed to say whatever they want, unquestioned.
dmix · 6h ago
In a meta sense, yes, but in practice it’s mostly just a large collection of journalists and editors, real humans, working in a chaotic information space where there’s a large variety of angles and sources being put out at all times depending on the context.
It’s equally easy to cherry pick this sort of thing to build a narrative of some ulterior agenda. Especially given the high pace that news demands in the social media age.
What gets covered could simply be who a journalist happened to talked to the past week or what is trending on social media that will get clicks.
dvdplm · 3h ago
This is the kind of comment that at first glance seems measured and well-phrased. I’m sure it depicts a common situation in journalism too, after all they’re just humans like the rest of us.
The problem here is the enormity of what is actually going on in Gaza: a slaughter and a terror campaign we haven’t seen the likes of since Pol Pot. It is not two sides in disagreement, each jostling for attention on roughly equal terms, each somewhat right and somewhat wrong. Two years in, we’re well beyond that and the only thing that matters is that one side is sadistically slaughtering the other and the world is pretending it’s not happening.
garbagewoman · 5h ago
Thats a very reductive view of the situation, have you been keeping track of the headlines or are you just a disinterested outsider?
memonkey · 5h ago
> What gets covered could simply be who a journalist happened to talked to the past week or what is trending on social media that will get clicks.
Do you believe this with regard to what is happening in Israel/Palestine?
The chaos of information and what is truth is only bubbled up when 1) there's very few journalists in the area or 2) all the journalists are being killed or 3) there's no journalists and only special interests.
Consider that even if it was a "narrative" which at this point is controlled by social media, as it stands it seems to be: "these people are evil, they should be killed, sorry not sorry about the babies" or "these people are committing genocide, this bad."
bawolff · 2h ago
Call me crazy, but neutral journalists should not be calling either side "evil". They should be reporting what each side does and let the reader draw their own moral conclusions.
chii · 5h ago
and that's why you don't listen to only a single source of news.
Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.
Learn to discern what is a fact, and what is opinion presented as fact, and learn to read critically - such as question if there would be any omissions, or misrepresentations of facts to make persuasions. Learn to dissect the works, such as dramatic music and literary methods of persuasion, and how it affects the reader's perceptions.
All of this was taught in highschool literary criticism classes - just on old books and such, rather than modern material. But the same exact lessons could've been applied. Except people merely either half-assed those classes and use cliff notes, or just straight skipped them - leading to today's world where most adults are unable to critically examine the media they consume.
jhanschoo · 3h ago
Sure, as a consumer, that is what you should do. But the issue at hand is that the BBC and its employees hold the BBC to a journalistic standard that it does not meet (according to those employees).
trashtensor · 5h ago
> and that's why you don't listen to only a single source of news.
> Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.
Easy to say in the abstract, harder to do when many "credible" sources toe the line and the ones that don't are discredited as "state sponsored news" or worse.
t-3 · 3h ago
> Easy to say in the abstract, harder to do when many "credible" sources toe the line and the ones that don't are discredited as "state sponsored news" or worse.
Even when a source is unreliable, probable half-truths and lies are still valuable information when read critically and juxtaposed with many sources. Observing and noting when different factions agree and disagree on basic facts can be highly enlightening even when it's impossible to make a judgement on whether either side is right or wrong and to what degree. Identifying and recognizing the use and proliferation of canned phrases is also very helpful in constructing a mental map of the global journo-political landscape.
Also, highly credible organizations will be wrong sometimes and vice versa. One is never enough.
chii · 5h ago
> are discredited as "state sponsored news" or worse
and who's doing that discrediting? That's also a source.
theptip · 6h ago
A sin of omission, not commission.
> We believe the refusal to broadcast the documentary ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’ is just one in a long line of agenda driven decisions.
darkoob12 · 4h ago
It's mostly anout how Israel army controls the way journalists report the war or regime in west bank that walks, quacks, and swims like an apartheid but apparently they can't call it that.
Sadly no one will be able to document the carnage in gaza. They plan to create an internment camp in the south and move civilians into at after making sure they are not linked to Hamas. Then they are going to basically follow Trump's plan to clean Gaza by building new jewish settlements and kill anyone outside the internment camp. While doing that they will not allow independent journalists to go in gaza.
bawolff · 2h ago
As much as there are barriers to reporters here, it seems less than most other conflicts. Its not like journalists have unrestricted access to the Ukraine/Russia front line. Access to other conflicts like Sudan or Myanmar are also very restricted in practise.
NomDePlum · 1h ago
That doesn't appear to be correct. How have you reached that conclusion?
Israel has not granted access to journalists to report independently since October 2023.
There has been very limited escorted trips with external journalists but all tightly supervised by the IDF.
Journalists already in Gaza have been killed regularly and there are credible accusations that many are deliberately targeted by the IDF.
jedimind · 6h ago
"Comprehensive new research finds the BBC coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is systematically biased against Palestinians and fails to reach standards of impartiality.
Analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) shows Israeli deaths are given 33 times more coverage per fatality, and both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards. BBC content was found to consistently shut down allegations of genocide."
The self-described mission of the Centre For Media Monitoring is "Promoting Fair And Responsible Reporting Of Muslims And Islam", so they might be slightly biased...
jedimind · 6h ago
According to your own logic I should not even bother providing any evidence when you can simply assume any organization to be biased based on identity alone instead of addressing the evidence they provide, like the BBC operates under a Royal Charter agreed upon with the britsh government, "so they might be slightly biased..."
"Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and unquestioning acceptance of Israeli PR. This has allegedly been overseen by BBC Middle East Editor and apparent Binyamin Netanyahu admirer, Raffi Berg, who is accused by anonymous journalists of “micromanaging” the section." - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra...
bawolff · 2h ago
Would you honestly accept a report by an Israeli think tank that came to the opposite conclusion? I feel like most people would be suspicious of such a report.
propagandist · 6h ago
Nice ad hominem.
I hope you apply the same skepticism when every other commentator on half the MSM channels is an IDF member or ex-member. Same goes for much of their staff.
CoastalCoder · 5h ago
I'd think this is more an example of a "genetic fallacy" rather than "ad hominem".
I.e., impugning the argument based on who presents it.
propagandist · 5h ago
Thank you for the correction! Won't mix up my fallacies next time.
nandomrumber · 3h ago
Isn’t military service in Israel compulsory?
Daishiman · 6h ago
Imagine all the other things they have not published because even with what they've written, it's still pro-Israeli bias.
Protostome · 22m ago
And I assume the BBC are completely impartial regarding the conflict.
epja · 7h ago
It's worth noting the BBC has also been accused of an anti-Israel bias including but not limited to airing a documentary produced by a Hamas linked individuals[1].
> 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.
physicsguy · 2h ago
The kid was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who yes is a Hamas minor official, but the thing was that the documentary makers knew that and hid it from the BBC who commissioned the documentary by pretending he had a different surname. The documentary showed the boy's "father" but it was actually his uncle. The kid's grandad, Ibrahim al-Yazouri, was one of the founding members of Hamas.
They translated the documentary's participants use of the word Yehud i.e. Jew into 'Israeli'. One of the cameramen Amjad Al Fayoumi (who effectively directed it, since the 'directors' were based in the UK) had posted on Facebook support about the 7th October terrorist attacks that kicked all of this off.
The problem is that the BBC and other media producers need to be squeaky clean when doing reporting on this, on both sides. It's not even like this was a quick news broadcast where accuracy needed to be checked, it was commissioned well in advance, they followed the boy around for months.
siegecraft · 6h ago
> the father of the child narrator’s son
this was confusing but I think it's supposed to just be "father of the child narrator." Also kind of weird they (the original parent link, it is in the bbc article) didn't name the documentary (maybe it's common knowledge to their audience?).
No comments yet
wzdd · 7h ago
The article mentions this.
epja · 7h ago
Apologies for the oversight. However I feel the author's phrasing "hysterical pro-Israel campaign" to downplay their concerns is telling.
selcuka · 4h ago
Well, we should accept that it was a bit hysterical. "Terror chief's son" [1]? Really? Apparently he's the deputy minister of agriculture. Ministers, bureaucrats and civil servants in Gaza are appointed by Hamas [2]
The fact that they have the same complaint from both "sides" suggests to me that they are doing a good job providing balanced coverage.
garbagewoman · 5h ago
It certainly convinced you anyway
GuinansEyebrows · 6h ago
That, or they’re doing a bad job and excusing it as balance.
swoorup · 6h ago
The world has been a sad state of affairs since Covid. People in power need more power for themselves, view the world as a zero sum game, use coercion, deceiving, propaganda to achieve their goals, in this case a territorial expansion. Anyone who opposes the means it's currently being carried out is a anti-.... whatever.
fossgeller · 1h ago
Imo the world was the same before in terms of corruption and propaganda, it’s mostly us, the common folks, who changed radically.
There are only binary states and opinions, either you’re a genocide supporter or an antisemite. Internet discussion on politics have gotten too toxic. Covid brought everyone online and we’ve been stuck in echochambers ever since.
LeoPanthera · 4h ago
It must not be the entire BBC. In the US I listen to the World Service radio news, and they do not shy away from reporting the horrors of war in Gaza. Even their interviews with Israeli representatives are shockingly unfiltered.
fyurule · 7h ago
Are BBC staff the last people to realise this?
YZF · 7h ago
The BBC having 21,000 employees (5500 journalists). Only 100 signed.
From my perspective the BBC is extremely anti-Israeli but for some people this is obviously not good enough. They want the BBC to champion their cause. Naturally people supporting the anti-Israeli cause who only get anti-Israeli content will feel that the BBC is "pro" Israel. Nothing could be farther from the truth and Pro-Israeli media looks nothing like the BBC.
"We were appointed by the Governors to assess whether the BBC's coverage of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict meets the required standards of impartiality."
...
"apart from individual lapses, sometimes of tone, language or attitude, there was little to
suggest systematic or deliberate bias; on the contrary there was evidence, in the programming
and in other ways, of a commitment to be fair, accurate and impartial;"
...
"these shortcomings include:"
...
"Equally in the months preceding the Palestinian elections there was little hard questioning of their leaders"
...
This has been a big criticism of the BBC which is still not addressed:
"The term "terrorism" should
accordingly be used in respect of relevant events since it is the most accurate expression for
actions which involve violence against randomly selected civilians with the intention of causing
terror for ideological, including political or religious, objectives, whether perpetrated by state
or non-state agencies."
aaomidi · 7h ago
That definition of Terrorism would make Israel a terrorist state.
ithkuil · 6h ago
I guess it's hard to define words. Surely terrorism has this vague meaning of doing very evil and violent things.
But a picked up a random dictionary and it says: "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims".
I struggle to understand what political aim Israel is pursuing when using unlawful violence and intimidation.
If you believe that Israel is performing a genocide what is the point of explicitly instilling more fear in the victims? Just sadism? I genuinely don't understand what advantage would Israel have in employing terror tactics against Palestinians. Is the idea that they do so in order to make them even more angry so they can justify their genocide? Is that the argument? Or am I not giving the same meaning to the word "terrorism" as you do?
I don't want to argue about which side is on the right side or whatnot; I found that this kind of conversation is is highly unproductive online. But I am interested in understanding how words have changed their meaning over time. Is terrorist now just a synonym for "murdering civilians"?
jhanschoo · 3h ago
Based on that definition alone, the occupation of the West Bank and the discrimination against its original people breaks international law, is enforced by violence and intimidation against civilians, and from the unlawful settlement in it, seems to be in service of the political Zionist aim of settling the region, let alone Gaza.
parineum · 2h ago
Traffic laws are enforced by violence and intimidation.
ithkuil · 2h ago
If any form of coercion and prevarication is labeled terrorism we then lack a word to describe the act of plowing through a crowd with a truck or planting a bomb in an everyday place with the intention of instilling terror in the population.
Those acts are different from military occupation or apartheid or genocide. It's not a judgement of value. It's a description of a method.
My point is that the word "terrorism" transcended the description of a technique for reaching certain goals, to a general blanket term used to describe "pure evil" and so people started to use it to describe very bad things even if they are not technically terrorism
dvdplm · 3h ago
Sadism for some, sure. For most IDF personnel I guess it’s more about “operational expediency”: if the population is terrified they’ll listen to your evacuation orders and show up to your aid distribution/killing fields on time. Finding terrorists one by one is hard work; tossing a bomb on a whole building is quicker and safer.
Terror is just a tool in the end.
TimorousBestie · 5h ago
I appreciate the synchronicity between your username and words being hard to define! If only I had the spare time to pick up such a difficult conlang.
aaomidi · 40m ago
Political aims that come to mind:
- settlement and expulsion of Palestinians (think the bulldozer tactics)
- a testing ground for weapons: Israel routinely uses footage and draws evidence about how they’ve battle tested their weapons and tech they’re selling in the West Bank. There’s a book about this: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2684-the-palestine-labor...
Anyway I think there’s probably more goals I can think of but these might be enough for now. Makes me too sad otherwise.
Daishiman · 6h ago
> "The term "terrorism" should accordingly be used in respect of relevant events since it is the most accurate expression for actions which involve violence against randomly selected civilians with the intention of causing terror for ideological, including political or religious, objectives, whether perpetrated by state or non-state agencies."
I have never heard the BBC accuse the Israeli settlers of terrorism against West Bank Palestinian villages.
YZF · 6h ago
If it meets the definition then they should.
jaek · 7h ago
Sadly it seems like this is indicative of a broader trend in Public Broadcast in the west. In Australia we've seen similar internal criticism of the ABC of an anti-palestinian bias in reporting[1].
It's deeply concerning that these publicly funded media outlets are being co-opted and manipulated by a foreign power.
How is it possible they influence so much of what happens in western politics, or at least how whole nations respond to their genocidal war anyway?
esseph · 5h ago
Many US states actually have laws on the books that prohibits anybody that works with or I think event contracts with the state gov from "discrimination against Israel", in various forms, etc, depending on the particular state.
To my knowledge, no US state has any other sort of legal recognition of any other foreign government/state.
Defence contractors hire a lot of people which in turn create a lot of ancillary jobs to support said industries.
Defence contractors are also becoming increasingly sophisticated so they use more software, more chips, more clouds, and more information security.
Almost all of MAFANG has some defence-related footprint, and some have multiple. You might see a few defence/defence adjacent companies in the monthly WhoIsHiring posts as well as https://www.workatastartup.com .
mikelitoris · 5h ago
The simple truth is there are a lot of zionists in powerful positions both in terms of governmental and monetary. Open wikipedia and look up cabinets and powerful people in US government since WW2. Pay attention to their ethnicity; even if half are zionists, that's a lot of people.
Edit: people downvoting this, first part of the comment is just facts, second part is plausible speculation. Why are you downvoting?
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bigyabai · 5h ago
One theory is that an abundance of American Christians believe in dispensational premillennialism[0], which rebukes orthodox Judaism in the hopes of returning Christ. Many dispensationalists (including Issac Newton[1]) attempted to interpret the Bible as a function of divine will, and argued that the foundation of Israel is directly imperative due to the prophecy of Daniel. This seems to go against the majority orthodox Judaism interpretation that the Third Temple (as well as the return of Christ) is willed by God alone and not predetermined conditions that men can control.
It's a bit out-there, but unfortunately I can't write-off DJT accepting it all at face-value. He's got conspicuous in-laws and an awfully weird track-record writing policy for the Levant. A religious conviction to defend Israel on behalf of his savior seems to slot rather neatly into his internal belief system.
Dispensationalism is a heresy that flows out of the Scofield Bible, created by a con artist, Cyrus Scofield. He was likely funded and supported by Zionists.
The Israel of the Bible does not refer to the country Israel, but many Christians have been deceived.
nandomrumber · 6h ago
From your link:
This is evident in our reluctance to use words such as ‘War crimes’, ‘Genocide”, ‘Ethnic cleansing’, ‘Apartheid’ and ‘Occupation’ to describe the various aspects of the Israeli practices in Gaza and the West Bank, even when the words are attributed to respectable organisations and sources,” staff said in the document, which is signed “Concerned ABC journalists and staff” and addressed to “managers and colleagues”.
That all sounds like it’s coming from a few bleeding heart lefties within the organisation and doesn’t necessarily represent the ABC as whole.
And goes on to say:
“Meanwhile, we’re quick to use ‘terrorist’, ‘barbaric’, ‘savage’ and ‘massacre’ when describing the October 7th attacks.
Is there any doubt? I watched part of the video from the bush roof massacre, that shit ain’t right at.
The ABCs anual budget is AU$1.2 billion.
Defund the ABC.
jaek · 6h ago
It's possible to believe that both October 7th and the subsequent genocide of Palestinians are horrific.
It's the duty of the press to report on these horrors in an unbiased and impartial manner.
> You few bleeding heart lefties
Ad hominems aren't arguments, fyi
nandomrumber · 6h ago
Sorry, that was supposed to say “a few” not “you few”, dunno how I managed that.
Alive-in-2025 · 6h ago
Yes, you are exactly right and I salute you for posting this. I believe the vast majority would say both of your thoughts here. Stop attacks and genocide on all. Hamas was awful on Oct 7, and the attacks on the innocent in Gaza, they are starving them are also.
repeekad · 7h ago
I don’t think the country of Israel is explicitly doing the manipulating, I think one country’s allies are just statistically richer and more influential than the other
engine_y · 7h ago
Like Qatar?
aaomidi · 7h ago
Qatar's riches are not that _unique_. It's just oil. It's a commodity.
aianus · 6h ago
Qatar sells natural gas not oil
aaomidi · 47m ago
Same idea
defrost · 6h ago
In the case of Australia you're correct in that it's not Israel reaching into Australia to alter opinion.
What is the case (in a many layered complex fabric) is that Australian Jewish groups have both actively pushed a narrative and worked hard to discredit any inkling of voice given to Palenstine by the public broadcaster that does work hard to be in the vicinity of neutral.
For better or worse they have gamed the Australian media system in their favour.
This recently hit the Federal Court of Australia which determined that (former) ABC executives (senior staff of the public broadcaster) caved to a pressure campaign to fire a radio broadcaster who tweeted a link to a Human Rights Watch report (that was unfavourable to Isreal) "in her own time" (not on the public clock and not contrary to any employment agreement).
As an outsider, I feel the narrative has totally turned for the rest of the world.
Israeli citizens protesting against the genocide and war crimes rekindled faith that it's mostly the top of govts and military industrial complexes pushing for this.
Not just BBC, most media ended up out in the open this time around. Or maybe it has always been like this, we are just growing up now and taking notice.
shantnutiwari · 1h ago
The left blames BBC, calling them Tory shills, the right blames them, calling them woke activists.
Dont know--seems to me they are doing the right thing.
ztrztrezzeru · 5h ago
"Stars and media figures", what an appeal to authority.
since key players realized decades ago how much sway news outlets hold over public opinion, a vast amount of them have been co-opted to spread propaganda [0]. at least a dozen countries and probably more (including Israel) are tapped directly into the five/fourteen eyes [1][2] intelligence network, countries which share "raw sigint" [3] with each other and strategically disseminate international propaganda to the alliance's benefit.
watching or reading publications from any of these nation's news outlets is intended and virtually guaranteed to paint them all as the "good guys", and any other countries as "bad guys". just like BBC is doing here. this is not a conspiracy, it's all fairly well documented.
murdoch empire, from zero to hero. also broligarchs are falling over themselves to own media companies. it doesnt take an einstein to see whats going on.
hliyan · 7h ago
I'm starting to realize, very belatedly in life, that we suffer from an end-of-history illusion in politics and political economy. I used to think we live in a golden age because a hundred years ago, democracy broadly replaced monarchies, market economies replaced feudalism and other coercive systems, and with it went many of the old, indirect mechanisms of subjugating large populations (e.g. moral imperatives through the Church, legitimization of rule through concepts such as the divine right of kings, control of education etc).
But it seems we've only replaced those mechanisms with more refined versions (manufacturing consent through mass media, surveillance and indirect indentured servitude through student debt, rent and health insurance).
We probably have another century of socioeconomic and political evolution to go before we reach a decent end state.
atq2119 · 7h ago
I like your optimism that a decent end state can be reached at all.
There are so many ideas that sound good on paper but are bad in practice, and that happen to be convenient for the goals of unscrupulous powerful people.
The notion that society as a whole will at some point stop falling for such ideas seems very optimistic to me.
Wickedflickr · 6h ago
Society came very close to realizing the beginnings of a decent state in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell faught in it, and wrote about what he saw that society achieving in his book, Homage to Catalonia.
ertian · 6h ago
It's not that hard for a new idea to look good for a couple short months/years. Building an ongoing, self-sustaining society that doesn't go completely off the rails is a whole other thing. There's a reason all these idyllic examples people give (Catalonia, Pre-USSR Ukrainian socialism, Paris Commune) were short-lived. If the Bolshevist revolution had been quashed in 1919, it would be idealized today.
int_19h · 5h ago
> If the Bolshevist revolution had been quashed in 1919, it would be idealized today.
I don't think so. Pretty much all the negative things about Bolsheviks were already prominently there by 1919. Anti-democracy, mass terror, torture, concentration camps, you name it.
Wickedflickr · 6h ago
They never collapsed from anything innate, though. They were always destroyed from outside forces. When your society represents actual freedom, you become the enemy of everyone, from capital to stalinism.
Centralization of power has so far made every society deeply flawed or even hellish. The three societies you mentioned are the only ones where power was purposefully decentralized, and that seems to be the most promising path forward that was never allowed to stretch its legs.
int_19h · 5h ago
I would argue that Rojava is one modern case that still shows hope. Although not as decentralized as those other examples, perhaps this is also why they're still there 11 years later.
Animats · 5h ago
> I like your optimism that a decent end state can be reached at all.
For a few brief years, it looked like we were there.[1]
Well, we have been improving. I don’t consider it too optimistic we’ll continue to do so.
smaudet · 6h ago
Improving at...what exactly?
Please don't give some tripe about medecine or something...sure we have some fancy new techniques and the like, but that doesn't matter if those systems aren't generally available or rejected on pseudo-religious grounds.
It might be true we have been living longer for a while, but that's a trend of the past 50 years in some areas, not some inexorable progress towards longer lives...
Maybe we have lots of food and entertainment. I suppose that is good, in theory. But again, not something of recent history, that has more to do with the availability of large shipping vessels and TV production...
The part people may find optimistic is continuing to improve in any appreciable manner, versus some gains made decades ago...
Aeolun · 6h ago
Well, for one thing, neither me nor my son work in coal mines. We don’t have to breathe any of the sooty gases that coal burning spews forth, and can turn on airconditioning in summer when it’s hot. Also, heated toilet seats in winter.
guelo · 6h ago
I felt a glimmer hope from Grok believe it not. On X it has been showing the potential of an AI being seen as a trusted authority to cut through a lot of propaganda based on facts. But then elon didn't like the "facts are liberal" vibes and nerfed it and now it can't be trusted, it's just another propaganda mouthpiece.
This points to what I think is the missing amendment to the US constitution, when a media company gets big enough to influence significant portions of the electorate it should not be allowed to be owned by a single billionaire or a small family. Large media ownership should be distributed as widely as possible across society so that one rich guy isn't able to force his opinions on everyone.
dluan · 7h ago
It's math. You can model what happens in n-player repeated games of incomplete information, and you'll realize we're far from any stable point. And it's not even that hard to understand that the narrative of "end of history" benefits the people who get to say that and uphold that narrative.
hliyan · 3h ago
Concur, but from a control systems point of view. Any system that does not define upper/lower limits and does not address feedback loops, are prone to oscillations, and if the size of the system grows over time, the oscillations can become progressively more violent.
Our socioeconomic/political systems currently do not define any hard upper or lower limits on its primary driver (economic power) and does not address feedback loops (e.g. more capital availability -> larger scale -> more economies of scale -> more market share -> more capital -> more scale).
Avicebron · 6h ago
Could just be cyclic? 1776->1861 (romanticism leading into civil war), 1861->1940 (modernism leading into WWII), [weird cold war baby boomer era of prosperity] 1970->2025 (post-modernism leading into..)
djkivi · 6h ago
See the Fourth Turning!
No comments yet
somenameforme · 6h ago
For more on this exact topic I strongly recommend Plato's "The Republic". The entire book is phenomenal, but "book" (chapter) 8 [1] is something that just completely reshaped my world view. There is an occasional reference that will make you think we've genuinely made progress, like casual acceptance of slavery, but when one reads just the political timelines and transitions he speaks of, he sounds like he's describing modern times, with a bit of edgelord flair, with complete hindsight bias. But that book was written 2,400 years ago!
It was a realization that nothing, except technology, is changing. We're not entering into some scary unknown time, but just regressing to the mean. Humanity seems to be stuck on a perpetual loop, probably because we really suck at learning from the past and inevitably convince ourselves that 'this time it'll be different.' And even on those issues we do seem to have made progress on, like slavery - is it just a coincidence that slavery ended universally, after millennia of efforts, only just after the Industrial Revolution and mass urbanization which effectively obsoleted it?
On the theme of slavery, consider that we mostly don't even blink twice now a days when a country drags men off the street, separates them from their family, puts a gun in their hand, and throws them in a trench to kill and most likely die. Those that continue to refuse to kill not infrequently end up 'dying in training.' To say nothing of barrier troops. This is all much worse than even slavery, but we casually accept it, because it hasn't yet been obsoleted. If the role of humans in warfare is ever minimized, imagine what lovely things they'll write about our morality and hypocrisy, just as we are wont to do about the past today.
---
As for the chapter referenced, Ctrl+F for "And democracy has her own good" and read from there. "Drone" is a term you'll see throughout classical writings. It's a reference to drone bees who contribute nothing to a hive, but exist solely to consume and mate if they can. So it's a term that refers to everything from beggars to criminals to corrupt politicians who prefer enriching themselves and special interests over broadly socially motivated politicking. So in modern times it would include practically all politicians.
Thats called illusion of control. Just look at your family and friends.
Some will always want much more than others. Some will always take paths that are easy. Some will have no problem taking advantage of the weak.
Keeping all those traits in check is a full time job. Its not free. It eats into limited time and energy. Sooner or later compromises are made.
Therefore parasites and predators always find space in any ecosystem you look at. You might be able to turn off/keep in check behavior of a few. But never all.
swoorup · 2h ago
Same, and it's quite obvious. You will get the same government regardless of who you vote for, its controlled opposition design to cushion some of your grievances but policies are set in stone.
chatmasta · 6h ago
Consider how insignificant your worries will seem to future generations in one, two, ten centuries from now.
Or maybe you think we’ll destroy the world or something, in which case that’s “chicken little syndrome.”
It’s hard to imagine we will regress in any meaningful way. That’s basically never happened, and even when it did, during the “dark ages,” we recovered – on a long enough timeline (which isn’t even that long) we’ve made exponential progress in every facet of life. There’s a lot to look forward to. Or you can be pessimistic about it during the few brief years you have in this world…
cantor_S_drug · 6h ago
The problem is you can't even point a finger or single out people responsible for the current state of things. Unless we collectively accept there is a problem, the solution will not get implemented.
somename9 · 4h ago
This is why monarchies are better than democracies. There is no accountability or ownership. A king wants to pass down something better to his progeny. A politician wants to make money and generally doesn’t care what state he leaves things in.
parineum · 2h ago
Why don't politicians care about their kids and why do monarchs not care about money?
somename9 · 1h ago
I never said either of those things. By progeny, I meant both the heirs of the king and the common race of people belonging to the kingdom. Kings were the head of different races of people and as the head, they looked after their people (if they were a good king). For example, a good king wouldn’t import millions of people who are different from those in his kingdom for economic reasons, and you don’t see this in history. It is his job to take care of his people and if he suddenly gave them an incredible amount of competition for resources, he would be responsible for causing his people great difficulty. He cares about them and wouldn’t do that.
Politicians don’t have this headship and from their behavior clearly don’t view themselves as stewards of their country and people (they do care about their own children though). An example of this would be Mike Lee’s attempt to sell off American public lands to foreign interests. The money raised from this would not make a dent in the deficit or debt, and it would take away beautiful fishing and hiking from Americans. Thankfully this was done away with, but a good king would never consider selling public land in the middle of his country to foreigners.
ToucanLoucan · 6h ago
I can think of numerous people who while not solely responsible for the state of things, have certainly fanned the flames to attain great personal prosperity at the expense of our collective psyche. Those people have names and addresses and they are not as they may believe immune from retribution.
I don’t want to live through any more historical times but I increasingly believe we’re on a precipice of incredible amounts of political violence, both against people who don’t deserve it, and people who do. And those people would be wise to pump the brakes a little.
123yawaworht456 · 5h ago
>We probably have another century of socioeconomic and political evolution to go before we reach a decent end state.
I agree with everything you said, but that's a rather odd conclusion. things are getting worse, not better.
rixed · 6h ago
What is this "end of history illusion", if not the belief that there is a "decent end state"?
There will always be reasons to oppose any current equilibrium for improvements, and that's ok.
hliyan · 3h ago
The "end of history illusion" is not the belief that there is a decent end state, but the belief of each generation that that state has been reached, and that they were to first to reach it.
rixed · 10m ago
Actually, this expression "end of history" has been coined, and the ideology(*) behind it promoted, in the 1990s after the collapse of the eastern block. Before that, for what I can tell, the prevaling idea seems to have been that of an "ustoppable march of progress". Long before that, I would guess that the most common ideology was that of a persistant, immuable order.
(*) That's the proper term to denote a concept that justify the will of a group, regardless of its veracity.
Considering history, I see no signs of converging to some end state. I guess technical progress and knowledge accumulate somehow, but even this is not linear and history shows plenty of exemples of drastic step backs. But even assuming an ever increasing technical progress, in a world with infinite resources (that's a very big assumption), what would be the end state? I guess, given we are on HN, a state were humans program conscious machines which then do all the hard work? In other words, the ideology of bigtech?
smaudet · 6h ago
We are probably several centuries out.
Thought experiment - how many generations does it take to forget grandpa?
If Grandpa is the issue, their grandchildren may have falsely optimistic opinions of their corrupt roots. Their children (grand grand children) don't have the same rosy memories, and don't get why Mom and Dad are into their weird rituals. But it's Mom and Dad so it can't be so bad, right?
It's not till their grandchildren, normally, that (assuming they are decent people and the trait isn't genetic or somehow encouraged by society) people can maybe see what utter crappy people their grand grand grand grand parents were, and maybe do something about it.
pomian · 6h ago
We are going up, slowly, in health, literacy, education - globally.
But, like all progress, it is up up and down, then again up up and down. Thanks to retro grades like Putin and Trump.
As to health indenture -that form of slavery is primarily in USA. Most other countries have figured it out.
I agree with hope for the future though.
Star Trek, not Star Wars!
janalsncm · 6h ago
Globally this is true because of improvements in developing countries. Not uniform improvement everywhere. Some places backslide.
qntmfred · 6h ago
gd it why did my ancestors never warn me about the end-of-history illusion
lossolo · 6h ago
I was in the same place not long ago, convinced that democracy’s march and market liberalization meant we’d finally broken the old chains. But the more I watched what people actually do, versus the rhetoric they spew, the clearer it became that most of our "freedoms" are just stage props. We have the illusion of democracy so we can feel free, the illusion of equal justice under law so we can feel secure, the illusion of meritocracy so we can feel hopeful. And thanks to this, they get stability. In reality, there are always those who want to be above the law and steer the masses and today’s new kings just wear different robes.
Media conglomerates manufacture consent far more subtly than the Church ever could. Student debt servitude, rent extraction, and opaque health insurance bureaucracy bind millions in ways that feel inescapable. Yet because it’s all cloaked in market-speak and "public interest" we barely notice our chains. Recognizing these illusions is painful, but it’s also the first step toward tearing them down. If we’re honest, the next century of political and economic evolution won’t be about perfecting the PR, it’ll be about building genuine checks on power, creating institutions that can’t be gamed, and demanding real accountability, even when the robes change.
dmix · 6h ago
> We have the illusion of democracy so we can feel free, the illusion of equal justice under law so we can feel secure, the illusion of meritocracy so we can feel hopeful.
All values and freedoms need to be fought for constantly and perpetually. They are not hard constants outside rare exceptions when it’s very clearly defined law. It’s simply the sum of the efforts of people currently on the planet. They are always under threat by people with good intentions or more overt bad ones.
What you may be seeing is a decline in people publicly pushing for them, especially in our institutions (politics, press, academia etc). But you can still find plenty of people fighting for them if you look deeper.
wtcactus · 6h ago
This is a non exhaustive list of news where the BBC started by blaming Israel of some war crime since the October 7th massacre occurred, and then had to remove, recant or apologize about after overwhelming evidence against it came to light:
- Al-Ahli hospital explosion (Oct 2023)
- Al-Shifa hospital “medical teams targeted” (Nov 2023)
- Summary executions claim (Dec 24)
- Aid‑centre shooting attribution (Jun 2025)
- Al‑Shifa “raid on medical teams” redux (Jun 2025)
Imagine if the journalists weren’t “forced to do pro Israel PR”.
BBC needs a proper external investigation on the levels of anti semitism that clearly permeate the ranks of their so called journalists.
ragazzina · 1h ago
>after overwhelming evidence against it came to light
Or maybe they removed articles because of political pressure? Post overwhelming evidence against the fact that the Al-Ahli hospital explosion was caused by an Israel airstrike, for example.
wtcactus · 1h ago
Sure, here you go:
Not only every expert consulted by every journal agreed that the explosion was not even caused by an airstrike, but they also agreed it was caused by a projectile launched from Palestinian territory.
You are posting, with a straight face, a link that repeats in all its entirety how nothing conclusive can be stated, how no expert has ever given a definitive answer, and you are saying the article affirms the opposite.
Are you an LLM?
wtcactus · 42s ago
All the consulted experts on the source agree that this wasn't an airstrike.
Most of the consulted experts agree that it was fired from inside Palestinian territory.
No consulted experts agree this was an airstrike.
No consulted experts agree this was fired from outside Palestinian territory.
The whole war the BBC has been posting literal Hamas propaganda; over and over again using Hamas officials as the sole source for articles...
They finally said that an entire documentary about a Hamas official's son was too much, this one too, and apparently that's being biased?
BTW, this article doesn't mention that Gazans are still holding Israelis hostage, nor October 7th...
Edit - Ah yes, of course someone is abusing the flagging tool on this comment...
Aeolun · 6h ago
> BTW, this article doesn't mention that Gazans are still holding Israelis hostage, nor October 7th...
Ah yes, the 7 remaining hostages. But don’t forget that that counter is still zero for Israel only because all the people that could have been taken hostage have instead been killed.
dismalaf · 6h ago
It would be alot more than 7 if Hamas didn't murder a bunch.
Aeolun · 6h ago
Sure, but they’ve pretty much stopped now (presumably mostly because they ran out). Israel continues to rack up a larger count every single day.
No comments yet
topspin · 6h ago
Recent BBC World headlines:
Gaza doctor whose nine children were killed in Israeli strike dies from injuries (June 2)
Gaza now worse than hell on earth, humanitarian chief tells BBC (June 4)
Three journalists among five killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital (June 5)
Four killed near Gaza aid centre, health workers say (June 8)
Dozens of Palestinians killed while seeking aid in Gaza, hospitals say (June 11)
More than 20 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire near Gaza aid sites, Hamas-run ministry says (June 16)
Israeli forces kill 51 Palestinians waiting for flour at Gaza aid site, witnesses and rescuers say (June 17)
Eleven killed by Israeli fire while seeking aid in Gaza, rescuers say (June 18)
At least 12 Palestinians killed waiting for aid in Gaza, say medics (June 19)
Israeli military kills 23 Palestinians near aid site in Gaza, witnesses and medics say (June 20)
GHF boss defends Gaza aid operation after hundreds of Palestinians killed near sites (June 27)
At least 81 people killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, Hamas-run health ministry says (June 28)
Israeli military investigates 'reports of harm to civilians' after hundreds killed near Gaza aid sites (June 30)
Hundreds of families displaced by wave of Israeli air strikes on Gaza, Palestinians say (June 30)
Dozens killed in Gaza as Israel intensifies bombardment, rescuers say (July 3)
Israel's strike on bustling Gaza café killed a Hamas operative - but dozens more people were killed (July 4)
Now, perhaps these anonymous staff make some distinction between headlines and whatever they mean by "PR," but there appears to be zero hesitation reporting everything the BBC can find on the crimes of Israel, real or imagined. Reading the open letter makes no such distinction, citing "reporting" many times. At least two of the above are directly attributed to "Hamas-run ministry," which is somehow a source for BCC's supposedly pro-Israel reporting.
How am I supposed to not see what I'm seeing with my lying eyes? I don't believe I'm capable of this tier of cognitive dissonance.
WaxProlix · 6h ago
1. You don't have the counterfactual here, so who's to say how the world would have turned out without exhortations from top brass.
2. Recent is the keyword. The tide of public sentiment has shifted somewhat against Israel in this conflict as the civilian casualties mount & theater of combat expands, so maybe it's easier to be a Brave Truth-Teller in the past 2 months of a conflict whose most recent flare-up dates back going on 2 years now.
3. These seem like fairly sanitized headlines considering what they're actually talking about. Consider the last one vs "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens, Though They Claim One Murdered Individual Among the Group Not So Innocent" or something. So even though some of the facts are getting reported on, how they're reported on (arguably almost as important) could still be an editorial decision from higher echelons.
raxxorraxor · 40m ago
"Brave Truth Tellers"? There were protests on the 8th october after Israel was attacked and didn't even retaliate yet. Nothing happened to the people that shared their thoughts. I personally think they should improve their education on the topic, but that is my opinion.
This is a thorough victim complex if you really apply a neutral perspective.
"Counterfactual" my arse...
gruez · 6h ago
>1. You don't have the counterfactual here, so who's to say how the world would have turned out without exhortations from top brass.
This presumes the journalists are somehow neutral to begin with. If they're biased to be anti-israel, then arguably the top brass telling them to tone it down a notch would make the coverage more neutral.
>3. These seem like fairly sanitized headlines considering what they're actually talking about. Consider the last one vs "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens, Though They Claim One Murdered Individual Among the Group Not So Innocent" or something. So even though some of the facts are getting reported on, how they're reported on (arguably almost as important) could still be an editorial decision from higher echelons.
This presumes there's some Objectively Neutral™ version of a headline for a story, but how do know what that should be? Is the "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens ..." wording supposed to be the neutral version? If that's the neutral version, I can't imagine what the anti-israeli version is supposed to be.
WaxProlix · 6h ago
> This presumes the journalists are somehow neutral to begin with
I don't think it presumes that, I'm just pointing out that the existence of articles reporting on Israeli war crimes doesn't preclude bias.
> How do you define what the neutral version of the headline should be?
I don't really believe that true neutrality exists, we're always exposed to biases. Which and to what degree are at question here. My hypothetical headline was specifically meant to highlight this - the same events can be reported on "accurately" in many ways, with many biases. The existence of those facts in a newspaper doesn't mean there's no bias. That's all.
kelnos · 6h ago
Just because you can list a bunch of article headlines that seem to not show bias, it doesn't mean there isn't bias. That takes a much deeper analysis.
ryeats · 5h ago
It's ~1% click through most just get the news from the headline.
standardUser · 6h ago
> I don't believe I'm capable of this tier of cognitive dissonance.
Well, you're capable of some level. The allegations in no way suggest that articles critical of Israel aren't run.
smaudet · 6h ago
Having anti Israeli headlines is not the same as having pro-Israeli proganda. If the writers/editors believe what they are writing, well I suppose I don't an issue with that.
So it it seems like a legitimate letter, what's less clear is which, if any, of their pro Israeli articles are written by people who believe what they are saying...
tareqak · 6h ago
Good question. I don’t have the answers.
I am curious as to when and how journalists use language. Looking at the headlines you chose, I see that some are written in active voice and some are in passive voice. When do journalists choose to use active voice over passive voice?
No comments yet
asadm · 6h ago
I think the vibe is changing and BBC is letting these go on-air with care.
Do you remember when headlines with Israel's atrocities would be rewritten to not upset them? This was <1y back even.
somenameforme · 5h ago
Imagine China started doing to the Uyghurs exactly what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, and on the exact same scale. For that matter you can even say for the exact same justification - there have indeed been multiple mass death terrorist style incidents carried out by Uyghurs. Would you expect remotely similar framing?
The entire population of Gaza was only ~2 million and Israel has now killed/wounded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians directly, and it's likely some multiple of that have been killed indirectly (starvation, disease, deaths of despair, etc). If this was China, we would have long since been calling it a systemic genocide, done all we could to economically sanction them out of existence, and perhaps even flirted with direct invasions which would entail risking not only WW3 but global nuclear warfare.
But because it's Israel, we're instead shipping them weapons to keep carrying out this "war" and the media continues framing it as just a regrettable conflict with unfortunate collateral damage.
No comments yet
jedimind · 6h ago
Interestingly you only picked the latest ones and even those still contain bias. The evidence needs to be analyzed holistically, from start to finish. BBC consistently used passive voice when it comes to Palestinian deaths like "20 Palestinians 'died' in Airstrike" which can appear "non-biased" but becomes clearer when compared to proper headlines like "20 Palestinians, including children, were killed in an ISRAELI Airstike"
"Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and unquestioning acceptance of Israeli PR. This has allegedly been overseen by BBC Middle East Editor and apparent Binyamin Netanyahu admirer, Raffi Berg, who is accused by anonymous journalists of “micromanaging” the section."
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra...
molteanu · 6h ago
I still cannot get over the fact that we, in Europe, have banned RT on the grounds that it is a publication sponsored by a "foreign" government and, as such, it cannot be trusted.
For one, so many publications here in Europe are financed by the local governments and we have no problem allowing them to function and act in the interest or said governments. Two, it flies in the face of an independent, free individual who can choose what to read and discern what the truth is. By blocking it, you are saying, "You, as an individual, are not able to take your own decisions, you are not able to separate truth from lies and fiction." If, supposing the later is actually the case, then all this "free" media is actually dangerous as it becomes a game of "don't trust them, trust us!" and whoever has the better image, the best marketing and exposure wins over the others.
notpushkin · 6h ago
As a Russian, I wouldn’t trust anything that comes out on RT. Banning it though is a really bad move – something I would expect from the Russian government itself, not Europe. One of the reasons I’ve become disillusioned in EU recently.
atmavatar · 5h ago
> Banning it though is a really bad move
Why? With how confidently you state that, I'm rather curious what reasons you have.
int_19h · 5h ago
Because free people should be able to decide for themselves what to read and listen to.
The problem is, we've seen how that ends up: you get bad actors masquerading as news (e.g., Fox News, Info Wars, OAN, etc.) and people flocking to low information, high entertainment vendors over good faith (if sometimes or even often flawed) traditional news (e.g., Associated Press, Reuters, BBC News, etc.).
As such, you end up with a large cohort of people believing immigrants eat their pets, vaccines have microchips in them and are more harmful than the diseases they protect against, 5g towers cause cancer, chemtrails are a thing, and trickle-down economics benefits working people.
Now, I may ultimately accept the idea that no matter what we do, we're always inevitably screwed, and even the smallest attempt to curtail speech will always end in an even worse outcome (like how there exist some infinities larger than others), but even I get a little uncomfortable being that nihilistic.
belorn · 1h ago
Freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of thought, and freedom of receiving and imparting information and ideas. The United Nations was fully aware when making the declaration of human rights that bad actors existed. However the outcome of not having those rights have shown to be universally worse.
It is not that one has to accept that we are inevitably screwed. That assumes that no amount of work or effort can address social problems peacefully, and that the only way for a functional society is through force.
Im hoping that current decades of polarization and championing of censorship will end up resulting in similar conclusions as the UN did after world war 2. Censorship and violence only breed higher quantity and intensity of censorship and violence.
memonkey · 6h ago
Most thinking people will try not to take current event reporting at face value. For many Americans, it's easy to accept a lot of things your Mainstream Media Source gives you (including NPR or NYTs), and ironically when one of the current themes is to distrust mainstream media.
CoastalCoder · 5h ago
FWIW, I trust NPR reporting to only make true statements.
What they're sometimes guilty of (in my judgement) is one-sided reporting. E.g., regarding illegal immigration, providing sympathetic personal stories of illegal immigrants, but not of the persons hurt by illegal immigration.
It's also possible they've gotten better about this. I stopped listening years ago.
JackYoustra · 6h ago
I mean RT is bad. You're going to need a better example of something good that got banned.
preisschild · 5h ago
> have banned RT on the grounds that it is a publication sponsored by a "foreign" government
Not just a "foreign" government, but a government that is waging a hybrid war against the European Union, which includes disinformation through outlets such as RT.
Watch how quickly this disappears from the front page despite getting the most upvotes.
rd · 7h ago
I don’t disagree, but it does seem to fit squarely in a culture war (and or) political topic.
dybber · 5h ago
It’s gone.
jazzyjackson · 7h ago
flamebait gets removed all the time because there's no way there's going to be a productive, illuminating, curious conversation about it. doesn't mean there's a conspiracy to prevent discussion.
crystal_revenge · 6h ago
How is this flamebait? Is there another way to report on this topic that would be less inflammatory? Or should media manipulation by foreign governments simply not be discussed and we should just keep quiet less someone get upset?
Surely if Russia was manipulating BBC reporting it would be note-worthy as well no?
jader201 · 6h ago
I think parent just means that it’s a divisive topic, which means on the internet, that inherently makes it flamebait (and not necessarily through any fault of the reporting).
Even on HN (and sometimes, especially on HN).
There are some divisive topics that are less prone to flame wars on HN vs. other discussion platforms, but those are fairly limited, and often not political (in my experience).
crystal_revenge · 6h ago
The problem with this logic is that it is very, very easy for even a small number of people interested in silencing a topic on any issue they're concerned about "divisive" just by intentionally flooding the comments with knowingly inflammatory responses.
This has already be used on HN to essentially silence any serious reporting on climate change. Anyone technical with an interest in data will find most climate change related studies interesting, but a small minority of people who are fearful of the consequences will make sure to create an issue and shut down conversation, organically getting posts "flagged".
jader201 · 6h ago
I don’t disagree. I’m just afraid it’s a hard problem to solve, at least an automated one.
At one point, I proposed a read-only option for (well-reported) divisive articles to help raise awareness without resulting in flame wars.
But there are downsides to that, too — either they can still get flagged away, there’s a risk of garbage remaining on the FP if you disable the flag feature, and/or HN gets accused of bias if they manipulate certain articles this way (by disabling flags and/or commenting).
pvg · 5h ago
It's not some theoretical 'divisive', you can read how these threads go yourself, including this one. The meta discussions also make these a lot worse so it's hard to blame this on some 'small number' of people.
bigyabai · 5h ago
A lot of the flagged posts look completely fine, to me. Basically the entire discussion is greyed out, which suggests a pretty intense unwillingness to talk about the subject on principles alone.
I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides. If every HN thread resorted to this logic, nobody would want to use the site.
NaOH · 4h ago
>I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides."
The brinksmanship card of HN is the reverse of this framing: There must be level-headed discussion. To wit:
>The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.
I feel like it’s wrong to call this topic divisive. It doesn’t adequately address that one side of the divide seems to consistently advocate for condoning genocide in broad daylight.
jader201 · 6h ago
I’m not necessarily saying it is or isn’t.
But I think, by definition, if an article draws a lot of flagged/downvoted comments (as this one has), it’s hard to argue that it’s not divisive, at least to this audience.
Aeolun · 6h ago
Yeah. I won’t argue with the label. Just feel like we ought to have a better label for topics of this kind.
petesergeant · 6h ago
I mean I almost flagged it: the headline absolutely does not match the letter, and it’s clickbait by a well-known polemicist. Israel’s continued actions in the West Bank are somewhere between apartheid and ethnic-cleansing, the civilian deaths in Gaza are beyond appalling, and there are genocidal maniacs in their current cabinet, but this article is trash.
bofadeez · 6h ago
The PR only works on very old people and very low IQ people. It's just brute force at this point. Everyone knows what they're doing.
Everyone here can identify the fake comments. They think they're slick but it's just the Streisand effect at this point.
globalnode · 6h ago
or very badly educated.
mondojesus · 7h ago
There was a report commissioned into alleged bias at the BBC called the Balen Report. Some people report that it found no bias, but it hasn't been published to this day.
mrheosuper · 7h ago
What is pro-Israel pull request ?
Towaway69 · 6h ago
PR - public relations or propaganda - sometimes hard to tell the difference.
dluan · 7h ago
rewriting history
iceKirin · 6h ago
When the strong attack the weak, is your neutrality really still "neutral"?
burnt-resistor · 7h ago
Owen Jones recently took down JK Rowlings for personally attacking him for having ADHD and talking fast calling him a "drug user". She's an absolute monster akin to Ann Coulter.
I'm not sure who owen jones is or why this is relevant. Are you saying the letter is fake?
totetsu · 7h ago
Owen Jones is a UK political commentator and activist who reaches a large audience via Youtube etc. He has covered the latest Israel Palestinian war extensively and continuously from the start. is that a fair summary?
> Owen Jones (born 8 August 1984)[2] is a left-wing British newspaper columnist, commentator, journalist, author and political activist.[3][4][5][6]
> He writes a column for The Guardian and contributes to the New Statesman, Tribune, and The National[7] and was previously a columnist for The Independent. He has two weekly web series, The Owen Jones Show and The Owen Jones Podcast.
umanwizard · 6h ago
Joanne Rowling, better known by her pseudonym J. K. Rowling. No letter s in either version.
But this is also the example coming to them from the top. On the occasions where Israel has clearly committed egregious violations, such as shooting at people massed at the aid dispensal locations or the medics who then got buried in shallow graves, Israel gets barely a whimper of criticism from European politicians - and apparently full-throated cheering and support from the US. The ICC arrest warrant is as forgotten as last year's snow.
So why are we surprised the BBC doesn't want to stick its head above the parapet?
No, you get "fiery but mostly peaceful" campus protests and every BBC interviewer asking you in the perfectly aggrieved RP tones why you hate children so much.
Do you have a single example of a protest you try to summon here? I very much doubt it.
https://campaignformediastandards.org.uk/asserson-report.pdf
If so, then you're spreading misinformation. This is not a study. It's a report sponsored by Israel. It has flawed methodology and they made heavy use of ChatGPT.
I rest my case.
Self censoring their own documentary does not align with that.
Hasn't been the case for a long time though, eg. [0]
[0] https://www.mediareform.org.uk/blog/the-bbc-mid-term-charter...
Whenever a group publicly criticizes a behavior, you see the rhetorical question “Why are you surprised?”, and that feels dismissive and disingenuous.
Yes, BBC has some reasons to behave the way they do, sure. It’s really not relevant to the points being brought.
Every actor has reasons to behave. People are critical of the behavior, whatever the actor’s incentives are. Because a behavior feels more logical or rational it shouldn’t be discussed? If you would answer negatively then what’s the point of asking your question? Is it just to express your cynicism of that whole situation?
My point is they are responding to external constraints shaped by the broader society - the very same group who seems to put up with Israel's outrageous stunts. To angst about the first but not the second is the illogical bit to me. The BBC is not quite a weathervane, but like so many commentators in this space, is so heavily constrained in what it can do that it's meaningless to focus on the actions, not the constraints.
It's like when people are shocked that politicians are not morally superior to the average person in the society that raised them. You sample from a group, you're going to mimick its distribution.
So I am not surprised or shocked how the BBC is acting. I am surprised and shocked that the many societies (Europe, America, ME) seems to accept this situation, as a root cause if you like.
Well, I'm not surprised by that as I've seen the way that the BBC approaches "impartiality" (e.g. have experts explaining one side of an issue and then allow non-experts to spout falsehoods which aren't challenged despite them being demonstrably false).
As a license-fee payer, I detest the way that the BBC is ignoring its journalistic duty to present the facts in a non-partisan manner or at least attempt to do so. However, they consistently use different language to report on the different sides of the war.
Is there another source that does a better job at substantiating the claim that BBC has a pro-Israel bias?
- https://cfmm.org.uk/bbc-on-gaza-israel-one-story-double-stan...
- July 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jul/03/gaza-film-prod...
- February 2025 https://www.declassifieduk.org/battle-for-the-truth-pro-isra...
- November 2024 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bbc-israel-g...
- November 2023 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/as-israel-pounds-g...
Review of documentary BBC refused to air: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jul/03/gaza-do...
"Comprehensive new research finds the BBC coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is systematically biased against Palestinians and fails to reach standards of impartiality.
Analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) shows Israeli deaths are given 33 times more coverage per fatality, and both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards. BBC content was found to consistently shut down allegations of genocide." - https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/16/bbc-systematically-biased...
The tagline is "As many question BBC’s coverage, three academics tell openDemocracy why they don't think the broadcaster is impartial", which I think sums up the article accurately. That doesn't seem to add much aside from proving that there are outsiders (impartial or biased, we don't really know) that agree with one side. It shouldn't be surprising that with any culture war issue, than you can find some academics to be on your side.
>https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/16/bbc-systematically-biased...
Skimming the article, the methodology used is very questionable. For instance:
>Despite Gaza suffering 34 times more casualties than Israel, the BBC ran almost equal numbers of humanising victim profiles.
If you think 1 death = 1 coverage, then clearly BBC is biased. However, 1 death = 1 coverage is clearly not how anyone expect the media should operate. How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting? Does that mean the BBC has a anti-Sudan bias? Moreover should each death really merit equal coverage? Would it be biased if BBC ran more pieces about the sad plight of Ukrainian soldiers compared to Russian soldiers?
>It was also found to have attached “Hamas-run health ministry” to Palestinian casualty figures in 1,155 articles – almost every time the Palestinian death toll was referenced across BBC articles.
Why is this an issue? In the Russsia-Ukranie war for instance, if you cite casualty figures from Russia, it's pretty obvious that it's from the Kremlin. The Gaza Health Ministry is actually Hamas run, and that fact isn't readily apparent.
There are other serious allegations made in that piece that I don't have expertise to comment on, but the above two snippets don't inspire much confidence.
> Why is this an issue? In the Russsia-Ukranie war for instance, if you cite casualty figures from Russia, it's pretty obvious that it's from the Kremlin. The Gaza Health Ministry is actually Hamas run, and that fact isn't readily apparent.
Hamas is the legitimate government of Palestine. "Health Ministry" would be just as accurate and much less biased than "Hamas-run Health Ministry". The implicit accusation of bias against them by emphasizing the identity of the source is also extremely glaring when put into context; nearly every outside observer that's not an Israeli or US government organization to analyze the data and numbers has come to the conclusion that the "Hamas-run Health Ministry"'s number are an undercount.
They might have defacto control, but most countries don't recognize Hamas as the "legitimate government".
>Hamas is the legitimate government of Palestine. "Health Ministry" would be just as accurate and much less biased than "Hamas-run Health Ministry". The implicit accusation of bias against them by emphasizing the identity of the source is also extremely glaring when put into context; nearly every outside observer that's not an Israeli or US government organization to analyze the data and numbers has come to the conclusion that the "Hamas-run Health Ministry"'s number are an undercount.
So if the BBC was covering the election in Venezuela, would it be "biased" to point out that the election results were from the "government controlled" electoral commission, and that it was packed with Maduro's cronies? After all, the electoral commission is probably the "legitimate" authority for counting votes, so why point out it's staffed by government cronies? Just say that the opposition claims that their guy won, but the electoral authority said Maduro won. End of story. Or is it only biased if the journalist thinks something fishy is going on (ie. the vote was rigged in favor of Maduro)? How would we adjudicate this? This just inevitably devolves into "if you support Israel then saying anything bad about them is bias, and if you oppose Israel then saying anything good about them is bias".
Yes.
Retaliating to that to get your hostages back and to stop the endless attacks on your race is not genocide.
One major difference that I see - though of course I can't speak for the journalists - is that my country and tax dollars are directly involved in this conflict. Every child who burns alive, every man woman and child raped in an Israeli camp, every doctor or medic killed by targeted drone or sniper fire is in a sense in my name. I'm not saying Sudanese political instability isn't impacted by western actions, but this conflict is very real for a lot of people because of a direct, material involvement.
Journalists maybe feel this way, too?
I do also think this is a pretty straightforward distinction, and suspect your bringing up a fundamentally different conflict to say something like "well you think Israeli deaths get too much coverage in this war, why do Sudanese deaths not get very much?" is weird and borderline disingenuous.
In armed conflict far away from the country in question, comparatively for each side, yes, both sides' deaths getting similar coverage is how one should expect the media to operate.
If Chile and Peru get into a war tomorrow, the expectation would absolutely be that coverage of deaths by the BBC would be similar for both.
>How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting?
The obvious key difference here is that in those wars both sides of those conflicts do still tend to get similar coverage per death; which is almost none. At the very least there's not orders of magnitudes difference. Not sure how you missed this, but it doesn't inspire much confidence.
> Would it be biased if BBC ran more pieces about the sad plight of Ukrainian soldiers compared to Russian soldiers?
No, as Russia is a reasonable threat to the UK whereas Hamas is clearly not.
How often should the media report deaths? Each time a group of people die? Each time bodies are found?
> How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting? Does that mean the BBC has a anti-Sudan bias?
Are you familiar with the saying, “when a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, then does it make a sound”?
> Moreover should each death really merit equal coverage?
I would assume that an individual or a group of people that aspire towards neutrality, fairness, and humanitarian principles would treat one life as the same as another.
For reference, here is the BBC mission and excerpts from its charter available at https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/mission .
>> Our mission is "to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain".
>> The Charter also sets out our five public purposes:
>> 1. To provide impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them
>> The BBC should provide duly accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming to build people’s understanding of all parts of the United Kingdom and of the wider world. Its content should be provided to the highest editorial standards. It should offer a range and depth of analysis and content not widely available from other United Kingdom news providers, using the highest calibre presenters and journalists, and championing freedom of expression, so that all audiences can engage fully with major local, regional, national, United Kingdom and global issues and participate in the democratic process, at all levels, as active and informed citizens.
>> 2. To support learning for people of all ages
>> The BBC should help everyone learn about different subjects in ways they will find accessible, engaging, inspiring and challenging. The BBC should provide specialist educational content to help support learning for children and teenagers across the United Kingdom. It should encourage people to explore new subjects and participate in new activities through partnerships with educational, sporting and cultural institutions.
>> 3. To show the most creative, highest quality and distinctive output and services
>> The BBC should provide high-quality output in many different genres and across a range of services and platforms which sets the standard in the United Kingdom and internationally. Its services should be distinctive from those provided elsewhere and should take creative risks, even if not all succeed, in order to develop fresh approaches and innovative content.
>> 4. To reflect, represent and serve the diverse communities of all of the United Kingdom’s nations and regions and, in doing so, support the creative economy across the United Kingdom
>> The BBC should reflect the diversity of the United Kingdom both in its output and services. In doing so, the BBC should accurately and authentically represent and portray the lives of the people of the United Kingdom today, and raise awareness of the different cultures and alternative viewpoints that make up its society. It should ensure that it provides output and services that meet the needs of the United Kingdom’s nations, regions and communities. The BBC should bring people together for shared experiences and help contribute to the social cohesion and wellbeing of the United Kingdom. In commissioning and delivering output the BBC should invest in the creative economies of each of the nations and contribute to their development.
>> 5. To reflect the United Kingdom, its culture and values to the world
>> The BBC should provide high-quality news coverage to international audiences, firmly based on British values of accuracy, impartiality, and fairness. Its international services should put the United Kingdom in a world context, aiding understanding of the United Kingdom as a whole, including its nations and regions where appropriate. It should ensure that it produces output and services which will be enjoyed by people in the United Kingdom and globally.
> Would it be biased if BBC ran more pieces about the sad plight of Ukrainian soldiers compared to Russian soldiers?
Yes, it would be biased in the same way that the BBC runs more pieces about Ukrainian civilians than it does about Palestinian civilians. There are likely more published BBC articles about Ukrainian civilians with photographs, audio, video, and documents than there are about Palestinian civilians.
There is BBC staff reporting from Ukraine and/or with the help of Ukrainian media affiliates and Ukrainian sources.
Where are the BBC reporters in Gaza?
It's like the olden Google days - where people were doing SEO campaigns measured in deepness of the links...
Getting downvoted, but no one is saying I’m wrong.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly3zr8p46eo
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-15/nsw-antisemitism-crim...
Fake terror plots became criminal currency for a while in Australia.
My experience is quite the opposite with BBC having a clear anti war stance.
Most interestingly, it's about who holds the microphone and is allowed to say whatever they want, unquestioned.
It’s equally easy to cherry pick this sort of thing to build a narrative of some ulterior agenda. Especially given the high pace that news demands in the social media age.
What gets covered could simply be who a journalist happened to talked to the past week or what is trending on social media that will get clicks.
The problem here is the enormity of what is actually going on in Gaza: a slaughter and a terror campaign we haven’t seen the likes of since Pol Pot. It is not two sides in disagreement, each jostling for attention on roughly equal terms, each somewhat right and somewhat wrong. Two years in, we’re well beyond that and the only thing that matters is that one side is sadistically slaughtering the other and the world is pretending it’s not happening.
Do you believe this with regard to what is happening in Israel/Palestine?
The chaos of information and what is truth is only bubbled up when 1) there's very few journalists in the area or 2) all the journalists are being killed or 3) there's no journalists and only special interests.
Consider that even if it was a "narrative" which at this point is controlled by social media, as it stands it seems to be: "these people are evil, they should be killed, sorry not sorry about the babies" or "these people are committing genocide, this bad."
Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.
Learn to discern what is a fact, and what is opinion presented as fact, and learn to read critically - such as question if there would be any omissions, or misrepresentations of facts to make persuasions. Learn to dissect the works, such as dramatic music and literary methods of persuasion, and how it affects the reader's perceptions.
All of this was taught in highschool literary criticism classes - just on old books and such, rather than modern material. But the same exact lessons could've been applied. Except people merely either half-assed those classes and use cliff notes, or just straight skipped them - leading to today's world where most adults are unable to critically examine the media they consume.
> Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.
Easy to say in the abstract, harder to do when many "credible" sources toe the line and the ones that don't are discredited as "state sponsored news" or worse.
Even when a source is unreliable, probable half-truths and lies are still valuable information when read critically and juxtaposed with many sources. Observing and noting when different factions agree and disagree on basic facts can be highly enlightening even when it's impossible to make a judgement on whether either side is right or wrong and to what degree. Identifying and recognizing the use and proliferation of canned phrases is also very helpful in constructing a mental map of the global journo-political landscape.
Also, highly credible organizations will be wrong sometimes and vice versa. One is never enough.
and who's doing that discrediting? That's also a source.
> We believe the refusal to broadcast the documentary ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’ is just one in a long line of agenda driven decisions.
Sadly no one will be able to document the carnage in gaza. They plan to create an internment camp in the south and move civilians into at after making sure they are not linked to Hamas. Then they are going to basically follow Trump's plan to clean Gaza by building new jewish settlements and kill anyone outside the internment camp. While doing that they will not allow independent journalists to go in gaza.
Israel has not granted access to journalists to report independently since October 2023.
There has been very limited escorted trips with external journalists but all tightly supervised by the IDF.
Journalists already in Gaza have been killed regularly and there are credible accusations that many are deliberately targeted by the IDF.
Analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) shows Israeli deaths are given 33 times more coverage per fatality, and both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards. BBC content was found to consistently shut down allegations of genocide."
https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/16/bbc-systematically-biased...
"Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and unquestioning acceptance of Israeli PR. This has allegedly been overseen by BBC Middle East Editor and apparent Binyamin Netanyahu admirer, Raffi Berg, who is accused by anonymous journalists of “micromanaging” the section." - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra...
I hope you apply the same skepticism when every other commentator on half the MSM channels is an IDF member or ex-member. Same goes for much of their staff.
I.e., impugning the argument based on who presents it.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07zz5937llo
> 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.
They translated the documentary's participants use of the word Yehud i.e. Jew into 'Israeli'. One of the cameramen Amjad Al Fayoumi (who effectively directed it, since the 'directors' were based in the UK) had posted on Facebook support about the 7th October terrorist attacks that kicked all of this off.
The problem is that the BBC and other media producers need to be squeaky clean when doing reporting on this, on both sides. It's not even like this was a quick news broadcast where accuracy needed to be checked, it was commissioned well in advance, they followed the boy around for months.
this was confusing but I think it's supposed to just be "father of the child narrator." Also kind of weird they (the original parent link, it is in the bbc article) didn't name the documentary (maybe it's common knowledge to their audience?).
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[1] https://www.gbnews.com/news/bbc-hamas-propaganda-documentary...
[2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-palestinian-chi...
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There are only binary states and opinions, either you’re a genocide supporter or an antisemite. Internet discussion on politics have gotten too toxic. Covid brought everyone online and we’ve been stuck in echochambers ever since.
From my perspective the BBC is extremely anti-Israeli but for some people this is obviously not good enough. They want the BBC to champion their cause. Naturally people supporting the anti-Israeli cause who only get anti-Israeli content will feel that the BBC is "pro" Israel. Nothing could be farther from the truth and Pro-Israeli media looks nothing like the BBC.
This is from 2006:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/governors_archive/im...
"We were appointed by the Governors to assess whether the BBC's coverage of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict meets the required standards of impartiality."
...
"apart from individual lapses, sometimes of tone, language or attitude, there was little to suggest systematic or deliberate bias; on the contrary there was evidence, in the programming and in other ways, of a commitment to be fair, accurate and impartial;"
...
"these shortcomings include:"
...
"Equally in the months preceding the Palestinian elections there was little hard questioning of their leaders"
...
This has been a big criticism of the BBC which is still not addressed:
"The term "terrorism" should accordingly be used in respect of relevant events since it is the most accurate expression for actions which involve violence against randomly selected civilians with the intention of causing terror for ideological, including political or religious, objectives, whether perpetrated by state or non-state agencies."
But a picked up a random dictionary and it says: "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims".
I struggle to understand what political aim Israel is pursuing when using unlawful violence and intimidation.
If you believe that Israel is performing a genocide what is the point of explicitly instilling more fear in the victims? Just sadism? I genuinely don't understand what advantage would Israel have in employing terror tactics against Palestinians. Is the idea that they do so in order to make them even more angry so they can justify their genocide? Is that the argument? Or am I not giving the same meaning to the word "terrorism" as you do?
I don't want to argue about which side is on the right side or whatnot; I found that this kind of conversation is is highly unproductive online. But I am interested in understanding how words have changed their meaning over time. Is terrorist now just a synonym for "murdering civilians"?
Those acts are different from military occupation or apartheid or genocide. It's not a judgement of value. It's a description of a method.
My point is that the word "terrorism" transcended the description of a technique for reaching certain goals, to a general blanket term used to describe "pure evil" and so people started to use it to describe very bad things even if they are not technically terrorism
Terror is just a tool in the end.
- settlement and expulsion of Palestinians (think the bulldozer tactics)
- a testing ground for weapons: Israel routinely uses footage and draws evidence about how they’ve battle tested their weapons and tech they’re selling in the West Bank. There’s a book about this: https://www.versobooks.com/products/2684-the-palestine-labor...
Anyway I think there’s probably more goals I can think of but these might be enough for now. Makes me too sad otherwise.
I have never heard the BBC accuse the Israeli settlers of terrorism against West Bank Palestinian villages.
It's deeply concerning that these publicly funded media outlets are being co-opted and manipulated by a foreign power.
[1]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/26/australias-abc-staf...
To my knowledge, no US state has any other sort of legal recognition of any other foreign government/state.
Defence contractors are also becoming increasingly sophisticated so they use more software, more chips, more clouds, and more information security.
Almost all of MAFANG has some defence-related footprint, and some have multiple. You might see a few defence/defence adjacent companies in the monthly WhoIsHiring posts as well as https://www.workatastartup.com .
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It's a bit out-there, but unfortunately I can't write-off DJT accepting it all at face-value. He's got conspicuous in-laws and an awfully weird track-record writing policy for the Levant. A religious conviction to defend Israel on behalf of his savior seems to slot rather neatly into his internal belief system.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premillennialism#Dispensationa...
[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16878
The Israel of the Bible does not refer to the country Israel, but many Christians have been deceived.
This is evident in our reluctance to use words such as ‘War crimes’, ‘Genocide”, ‘Ethnic cleansing’, ‘Apartheid’ and ‘Occupation’ to describe the various aspects of the Israeli practices in Gaza and the West Bank, even when the words are attributed to respectable organisations and sources,” staff said in the document, which is signed “Concerned ABC journalists and staff” and addressed to “managers and colleagues”.
That all sounds like it’s coming from a few bleeding heart lefties within the organisation and doesn’t necessarily represent the ABC as whole.
And goes on to say:
“Meanwhile, we’re quick to use ‘terrorist’, ‘barbaric’, ‘savage’ and ‘massacre’ when describing the October 7th attacks.
Is there any doubt? I watched part of the video from the bush roof massacre, that shit ain’t right at.
The ABCs anual budget is AU$1.2 billion.
Defund the ABC.
It's the duty of the press to report on these horrors in an unbiased and impartial manner.
> You few bleeding heart lefties
Ad hominems aren't arguments, fyi
What is the case (in a many layered complex fabric) is that Australian Jewish groups have both actively pushed a narrative and worked hard to discredit any inkling of voice given to Palenstine by the public broadcaster that does work hard to be in the vicinity of neutral.
For better or worse they have gamed the Australian media system in their favour.
This recently hit the Federal Court of Australia which determined that (former) ABC executives (senior staff of the public broadcaster) caved to a pressure campaign to fire a radio broadcaster who tweeted a link to a Human Rights Watch report (that was unfavourable to Isreal) "in her own time" (not on the public clock and not contrary to any employment agreement).
Court Documents: https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-tra...
Extensive other reporting elsewhere.
Israeli citizens protesting against the genocide and war crimes rekindled faith that it's mostly the top of govts and military industrial complexes pushing for this.
Not just BBC, most media ended up out in the open this time around. Or maybe it has always been like this, we are just growing up now and taking notice.
Dont know--seems to me they are doing the right thing.
https://youtu.be/gHTNuBKtzHc?si=aRYVjkzgj-U-yZIo
watching or reading publications from any of these nation's news outlets is intended and virtually guaranteed to paint them all as the "good guys", and any other countries as "bad guys". just like BBC is doing here. this is not a conspiracy, it's all fairly well documented.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#9_Eyes,_14_Eye...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-...
But it seems we've only replaced those mechanisms with more refined versions (manufacturing consent through mass media, surveillance and indirect indentured servitude through student debt, rent and health insurance).
We probably have another century of socioeconomic and political evolution to go before we reach a decent end state.
There are so many ideas that sound good on paper but are bad in practice, and that happen to be convenient for the goals of unscrupulous powerful people.
The notion that society as a whole will at some point stop falling for such ideas seems very optimistic to me.
I don't think so. Pretty much all the negative things about Bolsheviks were already prominently there by 1919. Anti-democracy, mass terror, torture, concentration camps, you name it.
Centralization of power has so far made every society deeply flawed or even hellish. The three societies you mentioned are the only ones where power was purposefully decentralized, and that seems to be the most promising path forward that was never allowed to stretch its legs.
For a few brief years, it looked like we were there.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...
Please don't give some tripe about medecine or something...sure we have some fancy new techniques and the like, but that doesn't matter if those systems aren't generally available or rejected on pseudo-religious grounds.
It might be true we have been living longer for a while, but that's a trend of the past 50 years in some areas, not some inexorable progress towards longer lives...
Maybe we have lots of food and entertainment. I suppose that is good, in theory. But again, not something of recent history, that has more to do with the availability of large shipping vessels and TV production...
The part people may find optimistic is continuing to improve in any appreciable manner, versus some gains made decades ago...
This points to what I think is the missing amendment to the US constitution, when a media company gets big enough to influence significant portions of the electorate it should not be allowed to be owned by a single billionaire or a small family. Large media ownership should be distributed as widely as possible across society so that one rich guy isn't able to force his opinions on everyone.
Our socioeconomic/political systems currently do not define any hard upper or lower limits on its primary driver (economic power) and does not address feedback loops (e.g. more capital availability -> larger scale -> more economies of scale -> more market share -> more capital -> more scale).
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It was a realization that nothing, except technology, is changing. We're not entering into some scary unknown time, but just regressing to the mean. Humanity seems to be stuck on a perpetual loop, probably because we really suck at learning from the past and inevitably convince ourselves that 'this time it'll be different.' And even on those issues we do seem to have made progress on, like slavery - is it just a coincidence that slavery ended universally, after millennia of efforts, only just after the Industrial Revolution and mass urbanization which effectively obsoleted it?
On the theme of slavery, consider that we mostly don't even blink twice now a days when a country drags men off the street, separates them from their family, puts a gun in their hand, and throws them in a trench to kill and most likely die. Those that continue to refuse to kill not infrequently end up 'dying in training.' To say nothing of barrier troops. This is all much worse than even slavery, but we casually accept it, because it hasn't yet been obsoleted. If the role of humans in warfare is ever minimized, imagine what lovely things they'll write about our morality and hypocrisy, just as we are wont to do about the past today.
---
As for the chapter referenced, Ctrl+F for "And democracy has her own good" and read from there. "Drone" is a term you'll see throughout classical writings. It's a reference to drone bees who contribute nothing to a hive, but exist solely to consume and mate if they can. So it's a term that refers to everything from beggars to criminals to corrupt politicians who prefer enriching themselves and special interests over broadly socially motivated politicking. So in modern times it would include practically all politicians.
[1] - https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.9.viii.html
Some will always want much more than others. Some will always take paths that are easy. Some will have no problem taking advantage of the weak.
Keeping all those traits in check is a full time job. Its not free. It eats into limited time and energy. Sooner or later compromises are made.
Therefore parasites and predators always find space in any ecosystem you look at. You might be able to turn off/keep in check behavior of a few. But never all.
Or maybe you think we’ll destroy the world or something, in which case that’s “chicken little syndrome.”
It’s hard to imagine we will regress in any meaningful way. That’s basically never happened, and even when it did, during the “dark ages,” we recovered – on a long enough timeline (which isn’t even that long) we’ve made exponential progress in every facet of life. There’s a lot to look forward to. Or you can be pessimistic about it during the few brief years you have in this world…
Politicians don’t have this headship and from their behavior clearly don’t view themselves as stewards of their country and people (they do care about their own children though). An example of this would be Mike Lee’s attempt to sell off American public lands to foreign interests. The money raised from this would not make a dent in the deficit or debt, and it would take away beautiful fishing and hiking from Americans. Thankfully this was done away with, but a good king would never consider selling public land in the middle of his country to foreigners.
I don’t want to live through any more historical times but I increasingly believe we’re on a precipice of incredible amounts of political violence, both against people who don’t deserve it, and people who do. And those people would be wise to pump the brakes a little.
I agree with everything you said, but that's a rather odd conclusion. things are getting worse, not better.
There will always be reasons to oppose any current equilibrium for improvements, and that's ok.
(*) That's the proper term to denote a concept that justify the will of a group, regardless of its veracity.
Considering history, I see no signs of converging to some end state. I guess technical progress and knowledge accumulate somehow, but even this is not linear and history shows plenty of exemples of drastic step backs. But even assuming an ever increasing technical progress, in a world with infinite resources (that's a very big assumption), what would be the end state? I guess, given we are on HN, a state were humans program conscious machines which then do all the hard work? In other words, the ideology of bigtech?
Thought experiment - how many generations does it take to forget grandpa?
If Grandpa is the issue, their grandchildren may have falsely optimistic opinions of their corrupt roots. Their children (grand grand children) don't have the same rosy memories, and don't get why Mom and Dad are into their weird rituals. But it's Mom and Dad so it can't be so bad, right?
It's not till their grandchildren, normally, that (assuming they are decent people and the trait isn't genetic or somehow encouraged by society) people can maybe see what utter crappy people their grand grand grand grand parents were, and maybe do something about it.
Media conglomerates manufacture consent far more subtly than the Church ever could. Student debt servitude, rent extraction, and opaque health insurance bureaucracy bind millions in ways that feel inescapable. Yet because it’s all cloaked in market-speak and "public interest" we barely notice our chains. Recognizing these illusions is painful, but it’s also the first step toward tearing them down. If we’re honest, the next century of political and economic evolution won’t be about perfecting the PR, it’ll be about building genuine checks on power, creating institutions that can’t be gamed, and demanding real accountability, even when the robes change.
All values and freedoms need to be fought for constantly and perpetually. They are not hard constants outside rare exceptions when it’s very clearly defined law. It’s simply the sum of the efforts of people currently on the planet. They are always under threat by people with good intentions or more overt bad ones.
What you may be seeing is a decline in people publicly pushing for them, especially in our institutions (politics, press, academia etc). But you can still find plenty of people fighting for them if you look deeper.
- Al-Ahli hospital explosion (Oct 2023)
- Al-Shifa hospital “medical teams targeted” (Nov 2023)
- Summary executions claim (Dec 24)
- Aid‑centre shooting attribution (Jun 2025)
- Al‑Shifa “raid on medical teams” redux (Jun 2025)
Imagine if the journalists weren’t “forced to do pro Israel PR”.
BBC needs a proper external investigation on the levels of anti semitism that clearly permeate the ranks of their so called journalists.
Or maybe they removed articles because of political pressure? Post overwhelming evidence against the fact that the Al-Ahli hospital explosion was caused by an Israel airstrike, for example.
Not only every expert consulted by every journal agreed that the explosion was not even caused by an airstrike, but they also agreed it was caused by a projectile launched from Palestinian territory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio...
Are you an LLM?
Most of the consulted experts agree that it was fired from inside Palestinian territory.
No consulted experts agree this was an airstrike.
No consulted experts agree this was fired from outside Palestinian territory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ahli_Arab_Hospital_explosio...
They finally said that an entire documentary about a Hamas official's son was too much, this one too, and apparently that's being biased?
BTW, this article doesn't mention that Gazans are still holding Israelis hostage, nor October 7th...
Edit - Ah yes, of course someone is abusing the flagging tool on this comment...
Ah yes, the 7 remaining hostages. But don’t forget that that counter is still zero for Israel only because all the people that could have been taken hostage have instead been killed.
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How am I supposed to not see what I'm seeing with my lying eyes? I don't believe I'm capable of this tier of cognitive dissonance.
2. Recent is the keyword. The tide of public sentiment has shifted somewhat against Israel in this conflict as the civilian casualties mount & theater of combat expands, so maybe it's easier to be a Brave Truth-Teller in the past 2 months of a conflict whose most recent flare-up dates back going on 2 years now.
3. These seem like fairly sanitized headlines considering what they're actually talking about. Consider the last one vs "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens, Though They Claim One Murdered Individual Among the Group Not So Innocent" or something. So even though some of the facts are getting reported on, how they're reported on (arguably almost as important) could still be an editorial decision from higher echelons.
This is a thorough victim complex if you really apply a neutral perspective.
"Counterfactual" my arse...
This presumes the journalists are somehow neutral to begin with. If they're biased to be anti-israel, then arguably the top brass telling them to tone it down a notch would make the coverage more neutral.
>3. These seem like fairly sanitized headlines considering what they're actually talking about. Consider the last one vs "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens, Though They Claim One Murdered Individual Among the Group Not So Innocent" or something. So even though some of the facts are getting reported on, how they're reported on (arguably almost as important) could still be an editorial decision from higher echelons.
This presumes there's some Objectively Neutral™ version of a headline for a story, but how do know what that should be? Is the "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens ..." wording supposed to be the neutral version? If that's the neutral version, I can't imagine what the anti-israeli version is supposed to be.
I don't think it presumes that, I'm just pointing out that the existence of articles reporting on Israeli war crimes doesn't preclude bias.
> How do you define what the neutral version of the headline should be?
I don't really believe that true neutrality exists, we're always exposed to biases. Which and to what degree are at question here. My hypothetical headline was specifically meant to highlight this - the same events can be reported on "accurately" in many ways, with many biases. The existence of those facts in a newspaper doesn't mean there's no bias. That's all.
Well, you're capable of some level. The allegations in no way suggest that articles critical of Israel aren't run.
At least it seems widely reported on https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/100-bbc-insiders-pen-lette...
So it it seems like a legitimate letter, what's less clear is which, if any, of their pro Israeli articles are written by people who believe what they are saying...
I am curious as to when and how journalists use language. Looking at the headlines you chose, I see that some are written in active voice and some are in passive voice. When do journalists choose to use active voice over passive voice?
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Do you remember when headlines with Israel's atrocities would be rewritten to not upset them? This was <1y back even.
The entire population of Gaza was only ~2 million and Israel has now killed/wounded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians directly, and it's likely some multiple of that have been killed indirectly (starvation, disease, deaths of despair, etc). If this was China, we would have long since been calling it a systemic genocide, done all we could to economically sanction them out of existence, and perhaps even flirted with direct invasions which would entail risking not only WW3 but global nuclear warfare.
But because it's Israel, we're instead shipping them weapons to keep carrying out this "war" and the media continues framing it as just a regrettable conflict with unfortunate collateral damage.
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"Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and unquestioning acceptance of Israeli PR. This has allegedly been overseen by BBC Middle East Editor and apparent Binyamin Netanyahu admirer, Raffi Berg, who is accused by anonymous journalists of “micromanaging” the section." https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra...
For one, so many publications here in Europe are financed by the local governments and we have no problem allowing them to function and act in the interest or said governments. Two, it flies in the face of an independent, free individual who can choose what to read and discern what the truth is. By blocking it, you are saying, "You, as an individual, are not able to take your own decisions, you are not able to separate truth from lies and fiction." If, supposing the later is actually the case, then all this "free" media is actually dangerous as it becomes a game of "don't trust them, trust us!" and whoever has the better image, the best marketing and exposure wins over the others.
Why? With how confidently you state that, I'm rather curious what reasons you have.
If you want a longer answer, George Orwell penned an eloquent one all the way back in 1944: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
As such, you end up with a large cohort of people believing immigrants eat their pets, vaccines have microchips in them and are more harmful than the diseases they protect against, 5g towers cause cancer, chemtrails are a thing, and trickle-down economics benefits working people.
Now, I may ultimately accept the idea that no matter what we do, we're always inevitably screwed, and even the smallest attempt to curtail speech will always end in an even worse outcome (like how there exist some infinities larger than others), but even I get a little uncomfortable being that nihilistic.
It is not that one has to accept that we are inevitably screwed. That assumes that no amount of work or effort can address social problems peacefully, and that the only way for a functional society is through force.
Im hoping that current decades of polarization and championing of censorship will end up resulting in similar conclusions as the UN did after world war 2. Censorship and violence only breed higher quantity and intensity of censorship and violence.
What they're sometimes guilty of (in my judgement) is one-sided reporting. E.g., regarding illegal immigration, providing sympathetic personal stories of illegal immigrants, but not of the persons hurt by illegal immigration.
It's also possible they've gotten better about this. I stopped listening years ago.
Not just a "foreign" government, but a government that is waging a hybrid war against the European Union, which includes disinformation through outlets such as RT.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jul/02/more-than-400-...
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n3926pSPNwXd8j7I716CBJEz...
Surely if Russia was manipulating BBC reporting it would be note-worthy as well no?
Even on HN (and sometimes, especially on HN).
There are some divisive topics that are less prone to flame wars on HN vs. other discussion platforms, but those are fairly limited, and often not political (in my experience).
This has already be used on HN to essentially silence any serious reporting on climate change. Anyone technical with an interest in data will find most climate change related studies interesting, but a small minority of people who are fearful of the consequences will make sure to create an issue and shut down conversation, organically getting posts "flagged".
At one point, I proposed a read-only option for (well-reported) divisive articles to help raise awareness without resulting in flame wars.
But there are downsides to that, too — either they can still get flagged away, there’s a risk of garbage remaining on the FP if you disable the flag feature, and/or HN gets accused of bias if they manipulate certain articles this way (by disabling flags and/or commenting).
I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides. If every HN thread resorted to this logic, nobody would want to use the site.
The brinksmanship card of HN is the reverse of this framing: There must be level-headed discussion. To wit:
>The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
But I think, by definition, if an article draws a lot of flagged/downvoted comments (as this one has), it’s hard to argue that it’s not divisive, at least to this audience.
Everyone here can identify the fake comments. They think they're slick but it's just the Streisand effect at this point.
https://youtu.be/vo-p-Ks9l04
> Owen Jones (born 8 August 1984)[2] is a left-wing British newspaper columnist, commentator, journalist, author and political activist.[3][4][5][6]
> He writes a column for The Guardian and contributes to the New Statesman, Tribune, and The National[7] and was previously a columnist for The Independent. He has two weekly web series, The Owen Jones Show and The Owen Jones Podcast.