Peter Oborne calls out BBC double standards over Gaza coverage
Peter Oborne, former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, questioned the BBC's Director of News Content, Richard Burgess, during the launch of the Centre for Media Monitoring's (CfMM) report on the BBC's coverage of Israel's war on Gaza.
The 188-page document analysed the broadcaster's coverage between October 7, 2023, and October 6, 2024, and found a 'pattern of bias, double standards and silencing of Palestinian voices' by the BBC.
Despite there being 34 times more Palestinian deaths, the CfMM found this was not reflected in the number of victim profiles the BBC ran for Palestinians (279) and Israelis (201).
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Findings also showed that the BBC interviewed twice as many Israelis as Palestinians when reporting on Gaza, and despite Israel being credibly accused of committing genocide in Gaza, the CfMM said BBC presenters interrupted or dismissed genocide claims more than 100 times, yet made no mention of genocidal rhetoric used by Israeli leaders.
'You never educated your audience about the genocidal remarks, and according to this report on 100 occasions, 100 occasions, you've closed down the references to genocide by your guests,' Oborne said to Burgess.
'This makes you complicit,' he said.
Peter Oborne calls out the BBC's Director of News Content for double standards and dehumanising coverage of Palestinians.
He spoke for the public. pic.twitter.com/1tiTUm7HHf — Hamza Yusuf (@Hamza_a96) June 17, 2025
Obrone argued that it is a 'grotesque omission' by the BBC to only mention the Dahiya doctrine, an Israeli military strategy involving the large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure, in passing once.
He added that people cannot understand what has been going on in Gaza in the last two years without the historical context of the Dahiya doctrine.
The report also showed that when compared with the BBC's coverage of the war in Ukraine, the BBC mentioned Russian war crimes 2.6 times more than Israeli ones and used sympathetic language for Ukrainian victims two times more than for Palestinians.
Oborne added: 'I can't believe what I'm going to say, this figure of 6%, 170 something journalists murdered by Israel.
'The BBC's only bothered to report 6% of them, whereas you duly reported 60% of Ukrainian journalists.'
During the report's launch on Tuesday, the CfMM, which is a project by the Muslim Council of Britain, called for an independent public review of the BBC's reporting on Gaza.
The CfMM said: 'This report is evidence-based, rigorous and damning. The BBC must reform.'
Commenting on the report, Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to the UK, said: 'In spite of the genocidal rhetoric of the Israeli leadership, the media persisted in projecting an inaccurate equivalence, distorting realities on the ground.'
Following the reports publication a BBC spokesperson said: 'We welcome scrutiny and reflect on all feedback. Throughout our impartial reporting on the conflict we have made clear the devastating human cost to civilians living in Gaza. We will continue to give careful thought to how we do this.
'We believe it is imperative that our journalists have access to Gaza, and we continue to call on the Israeli government to grant this.
'We agree that language is vitally important but we have some questions about what appears to be a reliance on AI to analyse it in this report, and we do not think due impartiality can be measured by counting words. We make our own, independent editorial decisions, and we reject any suggestion otherwise.
'However, we will consider the report carefully and study its findings in detail.'
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