A group of eight BBC journalists from the UK penned a letter to Al Jazeera arguing that their news agency “has failed to accurately tell” of the ongoing bloodshed in the Gaza Strip sector – “through omission and lack of critical engagement with Israel’s claims – and it has therefore failed to help the public engage with and understand the human rights abuses unfolding in Gaza.”
“Thousands of Palestinians have been killed since October 7. When will the number be high enough for our editorial stance to change?” the journalists inquired.
The BBC’s stance is hardly surprising, considering the fact that the conflict in the Gaza Strip is “a part of the wider conflict between what you might call the collective West and not only the axis of resistance, but also a big part of the developing world,” Gourdon said.
According to him, with the BBC essentially being an “organ of the British government” and representing “Anglo-Saxon geopolitical and financial interests,” the media outlet “is bound to be at some level aligned with the Israeli positions.”
“Therefore, I think it is inevitable that any major Western government-connected, or at least the mainstream media, to be in some way affirming that Israel, as the saying goes, has the right to defend itself and therefore has to do what it can to defeat its enemies when they attacked the state of Israel,” Gourdon remarked. “That is the situation and the position and the whole West is basically aligned on that.”
Gourdon added that he thinks that "the BBC does have a bias," and that "Palestinians are now the victims of some very brutal bombing and other sort of repression."
Meanwhile, independent media analyst Professor Ellis Cashmore noted that both the UK prime minister and the leader of the opposition Labour Party “publicly announced their alignment with Israel at the very start of the conflict,” even though the country has a sizeable Muslim population.
“Muslims in the UK and elsewhere in Europe have shown that their sympathies lie with Palestine. So, the allegiance of Britain's leaders was not representative of the views of the general population,” Prof. Cashmore said. “As the conflict has progressed, British citizens' perspectives have changed, leaving the two leaders looking one-sided in their approach.”