The BBC has been accused of breaching its editorial guidelines 1,533 times in its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, with the UK outlet allegedly showing repeated bias against the Jewish state, according to a new report.
Trevor Asserson, a British-born lawyer based in Israel, said a team of 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists analyzed 9 million words from the BBC using artificial intelligence to discover a “deeply worrying pattern of bias against Israel,” The Telegraph said.
The research said the BBC associated Israel with genocide 14 times more than Hamas, with the publicly funded outlet allegedly downplaying the role of Hamas terrorism in the war, which has gone on for nearly a year.
“Our analysis reveals a significant deviation from this standard, especially in its reporting on the Israel-Hamas conflict, where the broadcaster showed a clear partiality towards one side,” Asserson told The Telegraph of the outlet’s alleged bias.
“Such conduct not only breaches the BBC’s Royal Charter but also calls into question its suitability for continued public funding,” he added.
Along with accusing the BBC of showing bias against Israel in the war coverage, the AI-backed report also claimed that the Jewish state was ultimately presented as a “militaristic and aggressive nation” by the outlet.
Meanwhile, the BBC allegedly failed to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization 12,050 times during the initial four-month period when the war broke out.
The BBC’s Arabic Channel was also singled out in the report as one of the “most biased” outlets covering the war in Gaza.
The BBC said it would “carefully consider” Asserson’s report, but the outlet also questioned the researcher’s methodology and use of AI.
“We don’t think coverage can be assessed solely by counting particular words divorced from context,” a spokesman told The Telegraph.
Laurence Julius, vice chairman of the National Jewish Assembly, said the BBC has a responsibility to report without bias and called for an independent review of the outlet’s coverage on Israel.
The scrutiny aimed at the BBC comes after several incidents where journalists and staffers at the outlet drew criticism for their off-air interactions with the war.
In March, the BBC faced pressure to suspend reporter Soha Ibrahim for reportedly liking videos on social media of people celebrating the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre that left more than 1,200 dead in Israel.
Another staffer, Dawn Queva, was also caught making several now-deleted social media posts calling Jewish people “Nazi apartheid parasites.”