BBC bias – new turmoil

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 10 November 2025

November 9 saw the resignations of both Tim Davie, BBC Director-General and Deborah Turness, its head of news.

It was only two months ago, on September 9, that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons summoned Davie and BBC Chairman, Dr Samir Shah, to answer in person allegations of bias, editorial failures, and recent scandals, including how the BBC had come to transmit a TV program about the Gaza war that turned out to have been narrated by the son of a Hamas official. 

Shortly afterward, the broadcasting regulator Ofcom found that the film was "materially misleading", and ordered the BBC to tell its audience as much.  It was removed from the streaming service.

 Now a new furor is brewing.  On November 4 the UK’s Daily Telegraph revealed the contents of a 19-page whistle-blowing document, already circulated to the 14 members of the BBC Board of Governors, listing numerous examples of blatant bias in BBC news coverage. References to the Gaza war abound, and it also cites one egregious instance of deliberately faked news.

         Michael Prescott is a respected journalist who served as adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) for three years.  He resigned in June 2025 because, as he explained, his repeated warnings about systemic bias and misleading coverage had been dismissed or ignored.  Direct appeals to BBC’s top executives, including the chairman, he said, had resulted in no meaningful response.  It was the consequent frustration, leading eventually to despair, that prompted his resignation.

Out of office, Prescott wrote his 19-page memo, which includes a prime example of unethical editorial action already reported by him to senior management with no result.  Its publication by the Telegraph has plunged the BBC into crisis.

Just ahead of the US 2024 presidential election the BBC broadcast an edition of its flagship current affairs program “Panorama”.  It contained a version of Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech, made just after he had lost that election to Joe Biden. The speech was deliberately “doctored” to make it appear that Trump had incited the riots in the Capitol that followed.

What Trump said was: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol, and we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."

However, in Panorama's edit, he was shown saying: "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

The two sections of the speech that were edited together were more than 50 minutes apart.  The "fight like hell" comment was taken from a section where President Trump discussed how "corrupt" US elections were.

Following the doctored speech, the program cut to scenes of flag-waving individuals and the Proud Boys group marching toward the Capitol, the clear implication being that Trump’s words had led to the march.  In fact the marching sequence had been filmed before Trump began to speak.

When the issue was raised with managers, said Prescott, they "refused to accept there had been a breach of standards".

Another issue that particularly concerned Prescott relates to BBC Arabic, the TV and digital news service. He reveals that throughout the Gaza war it gave a platform to contributors known to have made extreme antisemitic comments.

One journalist who had said online that Jews should be burned “as Hitler did”, appeared as a guest on BBC Arabic 244 times in 18 months.  Another, who described Israelis as less than human and Jews as “devils”, appeared on BBC Arabic 522 times between November 2023 and April 2025.

Prescott describes the “critically different treatment” between the main BBC news website and BBC Arabic of a rocket attack on a football game in the village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights in July 2024 that claimed the lives of nine children.  BBC Arabic gave greater prominence to Hezbollah’s denials, did not mention the deaths of children, and the next day followed up with a report about claims that Israel faked the attack.

“It is hard to conclude anything other than that BBC Arabic’s story treatment was designed to minimize Israeli suffering and paint Israel as the aggressor,” wrote Prescott.

He refers to a report delivered to the EGCS in January 2025 by its senior editorial adviser.  In a period under review the main BBC website had 19 separate stories about the Israeli hostages, while BBC Arabic had none. There were four articles critical of Hamas on the main website and none on BBC Arabic, but every article critical of Israel that appeared on the main website was replicated by BBC Arabic.

 That, said Prescott, "should have prompted urgent action by the Executive but it did not.” Nor did a number of other examples.   

For instance, an internal review of the BBC’s reporting on the death toll in Gaza concluded that the BBC had given “unjustifiable weight” to highly disputed figures emanating from Hamas.  Moreover the BBC repeatedly stated on radio and TV, by Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s International Editor, among others, that the International Court of Justice had ruled in January 2024 that there was a “plausible case of genocide” in Gaza.  But the former ICJ president, Judge Joan Donoghue, told the BBC’s HardTalk program that the media had widely misinterpreted its findings, and it was not correct to say the ICJ had found a plausible case of genocide.  It took months for the BBC to issue a clarification.

The parliamentary committee will be questioning Prescott this coming Wednesday. It has also written to BBC chairman Samir Shah, demanding answers about the broadcaster’s impartiality. 

Culture Minister Lisa Nandy has told the BBC it must “thoroughly investigate” the issues that Prescott has brought to light.

Trump's press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, described the speech doctored by the BBC as "purposefully, dishonestly, selectively edited,"  and condemned the broadcaster for disseminating "fake news".    

Several organizations, including CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis), have claimed the memo vindicates their longstanding complaints about BBC coverage of Israel and antisemitism.  Political figures, including Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch and former prime minister Boris Johnson, have demanded explanations and consequences for those responsible for editorial misconduct at the BBC.

The resignations of Davie and Turness will bring no end to this ruckus.

Published in the Jerusalem Post and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Whistleblower journalist exposes BBC bias", 10 November 2025:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-873221