From Bashir to Gaza, the BBC needs to change

In 2006, the BBC commissioned a report on the impartiality of its coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict (the Balen Report), which recommended, unsurprisingly, that it should provide more comprehensive coverage; more historical and other background and context; a fuller account of situations and issues; and less reliance on striking and available pictures. The advice was not taken.

There are two flaws in the BBC system which reinforce each other: the reporters’ slant and the complaints system.

First, the reporters. Readers will remember how Barbara Plett admitted on air that she had wept at Arafat’s funeral. Another reporter was hired even though she had tweeted that Israel was “more Nazi than Hitler” and that “Hitler was Right”. As for Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen: he has accused Netanyahu of “playing the Holocaust card” and recently advised “every Jew” to read an “exploration of Judaism” that claimed that “racism, hate and violence are Jewish values too”.

Reporters readily resort to the loaded words “disproportionate” and “war crimes”, air emotional pictures of Gaza funerals and treat the numbers of deaths on each side as a measure of culpability. This year has seen damaging allegations that Israel refused to vaccinate Palestinians.

In recent weeks there has been no contextualisation or long term history of Sheikh Jarrah or the Temple Mount, no condemnation of Hamas, no explanation of its funding and no link of its terrorist activities to the plight of Gazans. Viewers are shown long reports about the deaths of Palestinian children without any counterbalancing report that Hamas deliberately put children in danger. I suspect the reporting in Arabic is even worse.

The mindset is one we recognise on the extreme left and in universities, nurtured in studios strewn with copies of the Guardian and shared at kitchen suppers confined to the liberal elite: Israel is unacceptable as colonialist, white, usurping, brutal, in breach of international law, too powerful and, above all, Jewish. It should, in their view, allow the return of the so-called Palestinian refugees and implode.

It is time to shake up recruitment and promotion within the BBC, engaging staff who have a balanced range of political views. Staff should be further educated by historians of the Middle East.

Second, there is the BBC’s complaints system. How does it react to its mistakes? Complaints are dealt with primarily by the BBC. For years, the corporation has shown itself unwilling to investigate complaints and uncover the truth, too proud to admit its lack of expertise and listen to the complainant. If a complainant is dissatisfied with the BBC’s decision, Ofcom has the last word. Success rates for complaints about Israel are close to nil.

Ofcom’s usefulness is limited because it is not recognisably superior to the BBC in the way that an appeal body should be: it has no more expertise. It is perceived to lack the necessary independence and detachment because many of its members are too steeped in the BBC and its culture, derived from their past careers there.

Externality in complaints handling is essential. BBC governance does not need overhauling. That’s been done quite recently and would have little effect on the anti-Israel attitude on display in its reporting. Complaints from inside and outside the BBC should have recourse to an Ombudsman who could be trusted to make decisions about the balance between public interest, journalistic freedom, impartiality and accuracy.

“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, to think it possible you may be mistaken,” said Oliver Cromwell. Those words should be engraved at the entrance to Broadcasting House.

Baroness Deech is a crossbench peer