The BBC’s coverage of the Gaza war is marked with consistent downplaying of Palestinian suffering while amplifying Israeli perspectives, marked by a choice of words aimed at drawing sympathy for Israel at the cost of Palestinians, a study has found.
A year-long analysis by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) — covering the period from October 7, 2023, to October 6, 2024 — reviewed 3,873 online articles and 32,092 television and radio segments.
The findings suggest that the BBC’s editorial approach has shaped public perception through uneven narrative framing and selective emphasis.
Rather than relying solely on human interpretation, which can be subjective and difficult to apply uniformly, CfMM used a Large Language Model (LLM), an artificial intelligence tool, to process thousands of articles and broadcast transcripts. Here are some of the most striking findings from the report.
Whose lives get counted?
Despite a 34:1 disparity in the death toll between Palestinians and Israelis by October 2024 (42,010 Palestinian deaths compared with 1,246 Israeli lives lost), the BBC gave Israeli casualties significantly more coverage per fatality.
The study revealed that the deaths of Israelis were mentioned 33 times more often in articles, 30 times more in opening paragraphs, 16 times more in headlines, and 19 times more in broadcast clips.
Six months into the conflict, a BBC article marking Israel’s Remembrance Day on May 13, 2024, featured emotional testimony from the families of fallen Israeli soldiers, including a reference to “25,000 soldiers [who] have lost their lives since the establishment of the State of Israel”.
However, the piece made no mention of the more than 100,000 Palestinians killed in the same period, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), nor did it acknowledge the tens of thousands killed since October 7, 2023.
The omission was not an isolated incident. In December 2024, an article discussing ceasefire negotiations stated that “1,200 [Israeli people] were killed and 251 others abducted”.
However, it did not acknowledge the more than 45,000 Palestinian deaths or the thousands subjected to prolonged and undocumented detention.
Despite the escalating Palestinian death toll, particularly during events such as the February 2024 Rafah offensive, the BBC’s reporting on Palestinian casualties remained infrequent, underscoring a persistent disparity in coverage.
The study raises concerns over editorial impartiality and questions why Israeli losses received disproportionately greater attention across BBC platforms, even as independent verification of Gaza casualties remains blocked.
Linguistics of bias
The language used by broadcasters plays a pivotal role in shaping public perception during conflict.
The BBC used expressions such as “murdered”, “slaughtered”, “barbaric”, and “atrocity” almost exclusively to describe attacks on Israelis.
For Palestinian victims, the broadcaster preferred passive terms such as “died”. Here, the actor becomes invisible and intangible, which makes the reader inevitably less attentive to the story.
For instance, the word “murdered” appeared nearly 60 times while referring to Israeli deaths but just once for Palestinian victims. Similarly, “massacre” was used to describe Israeli casualties nearly 18 times more often compared to Palestinian deaths.
The study found that BBC journalists and presenters used emotive language, such as “deadly”, “brutal”, “barbaric”, and “murderous” almost four times more for Israeli victims compared to Palestinians.
Among all emotive terms used by BBC journalists, 70 percent were applied to Israelis.
Whose voices are heard?
Another striking finding of the study is the significant disparity in the number of interviews conducted with Israeli and Palestinian representatives.
Section 6, 4.3.29 of the BBC’s editorial guidelines states that the broadcaster must “ensure that a sufficiently broad range of views and perspectives is included in output of a similar type and weight and in an appropriate time frame”. But the reality falls far short of the goal.
The analysis of over 8,000 BBC interview clips, gathered between October 7, 2023, and October 6, 2024, demonstrates that the BBC interviewed more than twice as many Israeli representatives (2,350) as Palestinian ones (1,085).
In addition to this numerical disparity, the report found that BBC presenters amplified Israeli talking points 11 times more frequently than Palestinian perspectives, while subjecting Palestinian guests to noticeably higher levels of scrutiny.
Anchor Maryam Moshiri, for instance, framed Israel’s actions as self-defence when questioning former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy, who replied, “Do you really keep a straight face when you say that?”
In another case, when former British MP Crispin Blunt referenced evidence of possible Israeli war crimes, the BBC interviewer responded: “You will know that Israel says it is not breaking international law.”
The findings presented by the CfMM point out a systemic imbalance in the BBC’s editorial handling of the Gaza conflict, one that contradicts its own standards of impartiality.
From disproportionate coverage of Israeli casualties to the use of unequal language and selective platforming of voices, the data shows a consistent pattern that shapes public perception through asymmetry.
As the broadcaster of record for millions, the BBC’s choices carry weight. In this case, the BBC not only amplified the Israeli narrative but also systematically sidelined the Palestinian one.
