Former BBC journalist goes rogue, calling out the broadcaster’s pro-Israel bias

Former BBC journalist Karishma Patel has called the broadcaster out for refusing to reach “reasonable, evidence-based conclusions” over Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As a result, she suggested, it has become “a vehicle in informational warfare”. And that’s why she resigned in 2024.

A conscious decision to hide children’s suffering in Gaza

The BBC‘s highly controversial decision to pull the recent documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, Patel said, was “a distraction from a much bigger problem my old employer has with impartiality”.

Her opposition to this call saw her join over a thousand UK-based media professionals in condemning the public broadcaster’s “politically motivated censorship”, which they described as “racist” and “dehumanising”.

They added that, by caving to nefarious pressure on behalf of the war-criminal Israeli government, the BBC was “erasing Palestinian suffering” and “suppressing narratives that humanise Palestinians”.

As Middle East Eye (MEE) described:

four days after the documentary aired on 17 February, the BBC pulled it from its streaming platform, iPlayer, after an intense campaign by pro-Israel groups and rival British media outlets.

While “there has been no evidence of Hamas influence on the film’s content”, the agitators jumped on the lack of transparency over 13-year-old narrator Abdullah al-Yazuri‘s father’s role as “a deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s government”.

The BBC reportedly hasn’t apologised to al-Yazuri, who has since become the target of online abuse and harassment. And if “anything happens” to him, at a time when Israeli war criminals have killed journalists with impunity, he has stressed that “the BBC is responsible for it”.

As Patel highlighted, the BBC disgracefully chose censorship despite having:

the option of keeping the version with a line of context on this, ultimately standing by the truth at the heart of the film: that Israel is harming Palestinian children.

And this fit in neatly with what she had discovered during her years at the BBC. Because while she had covered numerous topics, she stressed that:

it was in covering Gaza that I saw a shocking level of editorial inconsistency.

BBC professionals “choosing not to follow evidence – out of fear”

Journalists, Patel insisted, should reach “reasonable, evidence-based conclusions” via deep research “rather than setting up constant debates”. However, at the BBC, people:

were actively choosing not to follow evidence – out of fear. For months, I watched the BBC repeat one of its gravest editorial errors around climate change: debating a phenomenon long after the evidence showed it’s real.

She added:

Impartiality has failed if its key method is to constantly balance “both sides” of a story as equally true. A news outlet that refuses to come to conclusions becomes a vehicle in informational warfare

She also asserted that:

We have passed the point at which Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity are debatable. There’s more than enough evidence – from Palestinians on the ground, aid organisations; legal bodies – to come to coverage-shaping conclusions around what Israel has done.

And comparing the situation to the BBC‘s 2018 decision to finally issue editorial guidance that “Climate change IS happening”, she asked:

When will the BBC conclude that Israel IS violating international law, and shape its coverage around that truth?

There’s no ‘balance’ between genocidal war criminals and their victims

By hiding or omitting key context and toeing the line linguistically, the BBC has consistently failed to inform the public properly about Israel’s crimes in Gaza and the British government’s support for them. And as British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim told MEE, the censorship of Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is:

only the latest example of the public broadcaster’s regular capitulation to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby

Despite “good reporters” existing at the BBC, he said:

its bosses are hopelessly compromised by their pronounced and persistent bias in favour of Israel.

They fear Israel and its high-profile supporters, he stressed.

This, and the lack of political power and influence of Palestinians who have suffered decades of settler-colonial oppression, means there is a clear difference between how much scrutiny Israeli sources face in comparison to Palestinian sources.

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Journalist Sangita Myska has insisted that the “over-scrutiny of some Palestinian sources vs under-scrutiny of some Israeli ones” has severely damaged “public trust” in the corporation. And Richard Sanders, director of the powerful and comprehensive Al Jazeera documentary Investigating war crimes in Gaza, has asserted that:

a media environment where the victims of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid are subjected constantly to the most intense scrutiny, while their tormentors and those who support them are all too often allowed a free pass is a distorted and frankly racist one.

Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, he argued, is “by far the best thing the BBC has produced on Gaza”.

If you agree that the BBC should reinstate the documentary, you can support this petition, which currently has over 22,000 signatories. Also, you can see and share the documentary online thanks to people who managed to upload it.

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Featured image via the Canary