It's deeply concerning that these publicly funded media outlets are being co-opted and manipulated by a foreign power.
[1]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/26/australias-abc-staf...
What is the case (in a many layered complex fabric) is that Australian Jewish groups have both actively pushed a narrative and worked hard to discredit any inkling of voice given to Palenstine by the public broadcaster that does work hard to be in the vicinity of neutral.
For better or worse they have gamed the Australian media system in their favour.
This recently hit the Federal Court of Australia which determined that (former) ABC executives (senior staff of the public broadcaster) caved to a pressure campaign to fire a radio broadcaster who tweeted a link to a Human Rights Watch report (that was unfavourable to Isreal) "in her own time" (not on the public clock and not contrary to any employment agreement).
Court Documents: https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-tra...
Extensive other reporting elsewhere.
This is evident in our reluctance to use words such as ‘War crimes’, ‘Genocide”, ‘Ethnic cleansing’, ‘Apartheid’ and ‘Occupation’ to describe the various aspects of the Israeli practices in Gaza and the West Bank, even when the words are attributed to respectable organisations and sources,” staff said in the document, which is signed “Concerned ABC journalists and staff” and addressed to “managers and colleagues”.
That all sounds like it’s coming from a few bleeding heart lefties within the organisation and doesn’t necessarily represent the ABC as whole.
And goes on to say:
“Meanwhile, we’re quick to use ‘terrorist’, ‘barbaric’, ‘savage’ and ‘massacre’ when describing the October 7th attacks.
Is there any doubt? I watched part of the video from the bush roof massacre, that shit ain’t right at.
The ABCs anual budget is AU$1.2 billion.
Defund the ABC.
It's the duty of the press to report on these horrors in an unbiased and impartial manner.
> You few bleeding heart lefties
Ad hominems aren't arguments, fyi
It's a bit out-there, but unfortunately I can't write-off DJT accepting it all at face-value. He's got conspicuous in-laws and an awfully weird track-record writing policy for the Levant. A religious conviction to defend Israel on behalf of his savior seems to slot rather neatly into his internal belief system.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premillennialism#Dispensationa...
The Israel of the Bible does not refer to the country Israel, but many Christians have been deceived.
Defence contractors are also becoming increasingly sophisticated so they use more software, more chips, more clouds, and more information security.
Almost all of MAFANG has some defence-related footprint, and some have multiple. You might see a few defence/defence adjacent companies in the monthly WhoIsHiring posts as well as https://www.workatastartup.com .
To my knowledge, no US state has any other sort of legal recognition of any other foreign government/state.
> Owen Jones (born 8 August 1984)[2] is a left-wing British newspaper columnist, commentator, journalist, author and political activist.[3][4][5][6]
> He writes a column for The Guardian and contributes to the New Statesman, Tribune, and The National[7] and was previously a columnist for The Independent. He has two weekly web series, The Owen Jones Show and The Owen Jones Podcast.
Surely if Russia was manipulating BBC reporting it would be note-worthy as well no?
Even on HN (and sometimes, especially on HN).
There are some divisive topics that are less prone to flame wars on HN vs. other discussion platforms, but those are fairly limited, and often not political (in my experience).
This has already be used on HN to essentially silence any serious reporting on climate change. Anyone technical with an interest in data will find most climate change related studies interesting, but a small minority of people who are fearful of the consequences will make sure to create an issue and shut down conversation, organically getting posts "flagged".
At one point, I proposed a read-only option for (well-reported) divisive articles to help raise awareness without resulting in flame wars.
But there are downsides to that, too — either they can still get flagged away, there’s a risk of garbage remaining on the FP if you disable the flag feature, and/or HN gets accused of bias if they manipulate certain articles this way (by disabling flags and/or commenting).
I think by playing the brinksmanship card of "there can be no level-headed discussion" you inadvertently discount a lot of perfectly coherent and important digression, on both sides. If every HN thread resorted to this logic, nobody would want to use the site.
The brinksmanship card of HN is the reverse of this framing: There must be level-headed discussion. To wit:
>The most important principle on HN, though, is to make thoughtful comments. Thoughtful in both senses: civil and substantial.
But I think, by definition, if an article draws a lot of flagged/downvoted comments (as this one has), it’s hard to argue that it’s not divisive, at least to this audience.
[1] https://www.gbnews.com/news/bbc-hamas-propaganda-documentary...
[2] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-palestinian-chi...
> The only other BBC documentary which focused on the apocalyptic plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza was taken down as a result of a hysterical pro-Israel campaign - because the father of the child narrator’s son had a junior technocratic position in the Hamas administration. Irrelevant, given the narrator’s words were written for him by the documentary producers.
this was confusing but I think it's supposed to just be "father of the child narrator." Also kind of weird they (the original parent link, it is in the bbc article) didn't name the documentary (maybe it's common knowledge to their audience?).
My experience is quite the opposite with BBC having a clear anti war stance.
Analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) shows Israeli deaths are given 33 times more coverage per fatality, and both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards. BBC content was found to consistently shut down allegations of genocide."
https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/16/bbc-systematically-biased...
"Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and unquestioning acceptance of Israeli PR. This has allegedly been overseen by BBC Middle East Editor and apparent Binyamin Netanyahu admirer, Raffi Berg, who is accused by anonymous journalists of “micromanaging” the section." - https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra...
I hope you apply the same skepticism when every other commentator on half the MSM channels is an IDF member or ex-member. Same goes for much of their staff.
I.e., impugning the argument based on who presents it.
Most interestingly, it's about who holds the microphone and is allowed to say whatever they want, unquestioned.
It’s equally easy to cherry pick this sort of thing to build a narrative of some ulterior agenda. Especially given the high pace that news demands in the social media age.
What gets covered could simply be who a journalist happened to talked to the past week or what is trending on social media that will get clicks.
Do you believe this with regard to what is happening in Israel/Palestine?
The chaos of information and what is truth is only bubbled up when 1) there's very few journalists in the area or 2) all the journalists are being killed or 3) there's no journalists and only special interests.
Consider that even if it was a "narrative" which at this point is controlled by social media, as it stands it seems to be: "these people are evil, they should be killed, sorry not sorry about the babies" or "these people are committing genocide, this bad."
The problem here is the enormity of what is actually going on in Gaza: a slaughter and a terror campaign we haven’t seen the likes of since Pol Pot. It is not two sides in disagreement, each jostling for attention on roughly equal terms, each somewhat right and somewhat wrong. Two years in, we’re well beyond that and the only thing that matters is that one side is sadistically slaughtering the other and the world is pretending it’s not happening.
Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.
Learn to discern what is a fact, and what is opinion presented as fact, and learn to read critically - such as question if there would be any omissions, or misrepresentations of facts to make persuasions. Learn to dissect the works, such as dramatic music and literary methods of persuasion, and how it affects the reader's perceptions.
All of this was taught in highschool literary criticism classes - just on old books and such, rather than modern material. But the same exact lessons could've been applied. Except people merely either half-assed those classes and use cliff notes, or just straight skipped them - leading to today's world where most adults are unable to critically examine the media they consume.
> Find multiple, ideally both geographic as well as political alignment.
Easy to say in the abstract, harder to do when many "credible" sources toe the line and the ones that don't are discredited as "state sponsored news" or worse.
and who's doing that discrediting? That's also a source.
Even when a source is unreliable, probable half-truths and lies are still valuable information when read critically and juxtaposed with many sources. Observing and noting when different factions agree and disagree on basic facts can be highly enlightening even when it's impossible to make a judgement on whether either side is right or wrong and to what degree. Identifying and recognizing the use and proliferation of canned phrases is also very helpful in constructing a mental map of the global journo-political landscape.
Also, highly credible organizations will be wrong sometimes and vice versa. One is never enough.
> We believe the refusal to broadcast the documentary ‘Gaza: Medics Under Fire’ is just one in a long line of agenda driven decisions.
Sadly no one will be able to document the carnage in gaza. They plan to create an internment camp in the south and move civilians into at after making sure they are not linked to Hamas. Then they are going to basically follow Trump's plan to clean Gaza by building new jewish settlements and kill anyone outside the internment camp. While doing that they will not allow independent journalists to go in gaza.
Getting downvoted, but no one is saying I’m wrong.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly3zr8p46eo
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-15/nsw-antisemitism-crim...
Fake terror plots became criminal currency for a while in Australia.
But it seems we've only replaced those mechanisms with more refined versions (manufacturing consent through mass media, surveillance and indirect indentured servitude through student debt, rent and health insurance).
We probably have another century of socioeconomic and political evolution to go before we reach a decent end state.
There are so many ideas that sound good on paper but are bad in practice, and that happen to be convenient for the goals of unscrupulous powerful people.
The notion that society as a whole will at some point stop falling for such ideas seems very optimistic to me.
Please don't give some tripe about medecine or something...sure we have some fancy new techniques and the like, but that doesn't matter if those systems aren't generally available or rejected on pseudo-religious grounds.
It might be true we have been living longer for a while, but that's a trend of the past 50 years in some areas, not some inexorable progress towards longer lives...
Maybe we have lots of food and entertainment. I suppose that is good, in theory. But again, not something of recent history, that has more to do with the availability of large shipping vessels and TV production...
The part people may find optimistic is continuing to improve in any appreciable manner, versus some gains made decades ago...
Centralization of power has so far made every society deeply flawed or even hellish. The three societies you mentioned are the only ones where power was purposefully decentralized, and that seems to be the most promising path forward that was never allowed to stretch its legs.
I don't think so. Pretty much all the negative things about Bolsheviks were already prominently there by 1919. Anti-democracy, mass terror, torture, concentration camps, you name it.
This points to what I think is the missing amendment to the US constitution, when a media company gets big enough to influence significant portions of the electorate it should not be allowed to be owned by a single billionaire or a small family. Large media ownership should be distributed as widely as possible across society so that one rich guy isn't able to force his opinions on everyone.
For a few brief years, it looked like we were there.[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Las...
Our socioeconomic/political systems currently do not define any hard upper or lower limits on its primary driver (economic power) and does not address feedback loops (e.g. more capital availability -> larger scale -> more economies of scale -> more market share -> more capital -> more scale).
Media conglomerates manufacture consent far more subtly than the Church ever could. Student debt servitude, rent extraction, and opaque health insurance bureaucracy bind millions in ways that feel inescapable. Yet because it’s all cloaked in market-speak and "public interest" we barely notice our chains. Recognizing these illusions is painful, but it’s also the first step toward tearing them down. If we’re honest, the next century of political and economic evolution won’t be about perfecting the PR, it’ll be about building genuine checks on power, creating institutions that can’t be gamed, and demanding real accountability, even when the robes change.
All values and freedoms need to be fought for constantly and perpetually. They are not hard constants outside rare exceptions when it’s very clearly defined law. It’s simply the sum of the efforts of people currently on the planet. They are always under threat by people with good intentions or more overt bad ones.
What you may be seeing is a decline in people publicly pushing for them, especially in our institutions (politics, press, academia etc). But you can still find plenty of people fighting for them if you look deeper.
I don’t want to live through any more historical times but I increasingly believe we’re on a precipice of incredible amounts of political violence, both against people who don’t deserve it, and people who do. And those people would be wise to pump the brakes a little.
There will always be reasons to oppose any current equilibrium for improvements, and that's ok.
Some will always want much more than others. Some will always take paths that are easy. Some will have no problem taking advantage of the weak.
Keeping all those traits in check is a full time job. Its not free. It eats into limited time and energy. Sooner or later compromises are made.
Therefore parasites and predators always find space in any ecosystem you look at. You might be able to turn off/keep in check behavior of a few. But never all.
Or maybe you think we’ll destroy the world or something, in which case that’s “chicken little syndrome.”
It’s hard to imagine we will regress in any meaningful way. That’s basically never happened, and even when it did, during the “dark ages,” we recovered – on a long enough timeline (which isn’t even that long) we’ve made exponential progress in every facet of life. There’s a lot to look forward to. Or you can be pessimistic about it during the few brief years you have in this world…
It was a realization that nothing, except technology, is changing. We're not entering into some scary unknown time, but just regressing to the mean. Humanity seems to be stuck on a perpetual loop, probably because we really suck at learning from the past and inevitably convince ourselves that 'this time it'll be different.' And even on those issues we do seem to have made progress on, like slavery - is it just a coincidence that slavery ended universally, after millennia of efforts, only just after the Industrial Revolution and mass urbanization which effectively obsoleted it?
On the theme of slavery, consider that we mostly don't even blink twice now a days when a country drags men off the street, separates them from their family, puts a gun in their hand, and throws them in a trench to kill and most likely die. Those that continue to refuse to kill not infrequently end up 'dying in training.' To say nothing of barrier troops. This is all much worse than even slavery, but we casually accept it, because it hasn't yet been obsoleted. If the role of humans in warfare is ever minimized, imagine what lovely things they'll write about our morality and hypocrisy, just as we are wont to do about the past today.
---
As for the chapter referenced, Ctrl+F for "And democracy has her own good" and read from there. "Drone" is a term you'll see throughout classical writings. It's a reference to drone bees who contribute nothing to a hive, but exist solely to consume and mate if they can. So it's a term that refers to everything from beggars to criminals to corrupt politicians who prefer enriching themselves and special interests over broadly socially motivated politicking. So in modern times it would include practically all politicians.
Thought experiment - how many generations does it take to forget grandpa?
If Grandpa is the issue, their grandchildren may have falsely optimistic opinions of their corrupt roots. Their children (grand grand children) don't have the same rosy memories, and don't get why Mom and Dad are into their weird rituals. But it's Mom and Dad so it can't be so bad, right?
It's not till their grandchildren, normally, that (assuming they are decent people and the trait isn't genetic or somehow encouraged by society) people can maybe see what utter crappy people their grand grand grand grand parents were, and maybe do something about it.
I agree with everything you said, but that's a rather odd conclusion. things are getting worse, not better.
watching or reading publications from any of these nation's news outlets is intended and virtually guaranteed to paint them all as the "good guys", and any other countries as "bad guys". just like BBC is doing here. this is not a conspiracy, it's all fairly well documented.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement#9_Eyes,_14_Eye...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-...
From my perspective the BBC is extremely anti-Israeli but for some people this is obviously not good enough. They want the BBC to champion their cause. Naturally people supporting the anti-Israeli cause who only get anti-Israeli content will feel that the BBC is "pro" Israel. Nothing could be farther from the truth and Pro-Israeli media looks nothing like the BBC.
This is from 2006:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/governors_archive/im...
"We were appointed by the Governors to assess whether the BBC's coverage of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict meets the required standards of impartiality."
...
"apart from individual lapses, sometimes of tone, language or attitude, there was little to suggest systematic or deliberate bias; on the contrary there was evidence, in the programming and in other ways, of a commitment to be fair, accurate and impartial;"
...
"these shortcomings include:"
...
"Equally in the months preceding the Palestinian elections there was little hard questioning of their leaders"
...
This has been a big criticism of the BBC which is still not addressed:
"The term "terrorism" should accordingly be used in respect of relevant events since it is the most accurate expression for actions which involve violence against randomly selected civilians with the intention of causing terror for ideological, including political or religious, objectives, whether perpetrated by state or non-state agencies."
But a picked up a random dictionary and it says: "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims".
I struggle to understand what political aim Israel is pursuing when using unlawful violence and intimidation.
If you believe that Israel is performing a genocide what is the point of explicitly instilling more fear in the victims? Just sadism? I genuinely don't understand what advantage would Israel have in employing terror tactics against Palestinians. Is the idea that they do so in order to make them even more angry so they can justify their genocide? Is that the argument? Or am I not giving the same meaning to the word "terrorism" as you do?
I don't want to argue about which side is on the right side or whatnot; I found that this kind of conversation is is highly unproductive online. But I am interested in understanding how words have changed their meaning over time. Is terrorist now just a synonym for "murdering civilians"?
Terror is just a tool in the end.
I have never heard the BBC accuse the Israeli settlers of terrorism against West Bank Palestinian villages.
They finally said that an entire documentary about a Hamas official's son was too much, this one too, and apparently that's being biased?
BTW, this article doesn't mention that Gazans are still holding Israelis hostage, nor October 7th...
Edit - Ah yes, of course someone is abusing the flagging tool on this comment...
Ah yes, the 7 remaining hostages. But don’t forget that that counter is still zero for Israel only because all the people that could have been taken hostage have instead been killed.
Is there another source that does a better job at substantiating the claim that BBC has a pro-Israel bias?
"Comprehensive new research finds the BBC coverage of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza is systematically biased against Palestinians and fails to reach standards of impartiality.
Analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) shows Israeli deaths are given 33 times more coverage per fatality, and both broadcast segments and articles included clear double standards. BBC content was found to consistently shut down allegations of genocide." - https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/16/bbc-systematically-biased...
It's like the olden Google days - where people were doing SEO campaigns measured in deepness of the links...
The tagline is "As many question BBC’s coverage, three academics tell openDemocracy why they don't think the broadcaster is impartial", which I think sums up the article accurately. That doesn't seem to add much aside from proving that there are outsiders (impartial or biased, we don't really know) that agree with one side. It shouldn't be surprising that with any culture war issue, than you can find some academics to be on your side.
>https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/16/bbc-systematically-biased...
Skimming the article, the methodology used is very questionable. For instance:
>Despite Gaza suffering 34 times more casualties than Israel, the BBC ran almost equal numbers of humanising victim profiles.
If you think 1 death = 1 coverage, then clearly BBC is biased. However, 1 death = 1 coverage is clearly not how anyone expect the media should operate. How many people die in civil wars in Sudan or Congo, compared to how much coverage are they getting? Does that mean the BBC has a anti-Sudan bias? Moreover should each death really merit equal coverage? Would it be biased if BBC ran more pieces about the sad plight of Ukrainian soldiers compared to Russian soldiers?
>It was also found to have attached “Hamas-run health ministry” to Palestinian casualty figures in 1,155 articles – almost every time the Palestinian death toll was referenced across BBC articles.
Why is this an issue? In the Russsia-Ukranie war for instance, if you cite casualty figures from Russia, it's pretty obvious that it's from the Kremlin. The Gaza Health Ministry is actually Hamas run, and that fact isn't readily apparent.
There are other serious allegations made in that piece that I don't have expertise to comment on, but the above two snippets don't inspire much confidence.
> Why is this an issue? In the Russsia-Ukranie war for instance, if you cite casualty figures from Russia, it's pretty obvious that it's from the Kremlin. The Gaza Health Ministry is actually Hamas run, and that fact isn't readily apparent.
Hamas is the legitimate government of Palestine. "Health Ministry" would be just as accurate and much less biased than "Hamas-run Health Ministry". The implicit accusation of bias against them by emphasizing the identity of the source is also extremely glaring when put into context; nearly every outside observer that's not an Israeli or US government organization to analyze the data and numbers has come to the conclusion that the "Hamas-run Health Ministry"'s number are an undercount.
They might have defacto control, but most countries don't recognize Hamas as the "legitimate government".
>Hamas is the legitimate government of Palestine. "Health Ministry" would be just as accurate and much less biased than "Hamas-run Health Ministry". The implicit accusation of bias against them by emphasizing the identity of the source is also extremely glaring when put into context; nearly every outside observer that's not an Israeli or US government organization to analyze the data and numbers has come to the conclusion that the "Hamas-run Health Ministry"'s number are an undercount.
So if the BBC was covering the election in Venezuela, would it be "biased" to point out that the election results were from the "government controlled" electoral commission, and that it was packed with Maduro's cronies? After all, the electoral commission is probably the "legitimate" authority for counting votes, so why point out it's staffed by government cronies? Just say that the opposition claims that their guy won, but the electoral authority said Maduro won. End of story. Or is it only biased if the journalist thinks something fishy is going on (ie. the vote was rigged in favor of Maduro)? How would we adjudicate this? This just inevitably devolves into "if you support Israel then saying anything bad about them is bias, and if you oppose Israel then saying anything good about them is bias".
Yes.
One major difference that I see - though of course I can't speak for the journalists - is that my country and tax dollars are directly involved in this conflict. Every child who burns alive, every man woman and child raped in an Israeli camp, every doctor or medic killed by targeted drone or sniper fire is in a sense in my name. I'm not saying Sudanese political instability isn't impacted by western actions, but this conflict is very real for a lot of people because of a direct, material involvement.
Journalists maybe feel this way, too?
I do also think this is a pretty straightforward distinction, and suspect your bringing up a fundamentally different conflict to say something like "well you think Israeli deaths get too much coverage in this war, why do Sudanese deaths not get very much?" is weird and borderline disingenuous.
- https://cfmm.org.uk/bbc-on-gaza-israel-one-story-double-stan...
- July 2025 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jul/03/gaza-film-prod...
- February 2025 https://www.declassifieduk.org/battle-for-the-truth-pro-isra...
- November 2024 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bbc-israel-g...
- November 2023 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/23/as-israel-pounds-g...
Review of documentary BBC refused to air: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jul/03/gaza-do...
For one, so many publications here in Europe are financed by the local governments and we have no problem allowing them to function and act in the interest or said governments. Two, it flies in the face of an independent, free individual who can choose what to read and discern what the truth is. By blocking it, you are saying, "You, as an individual, are not able to take your own decisions, you are not able to separate truth from lies and fiction." If, supposing the later is actually the case, then all this "free" media is actually dangerous as it becomes a game of "don't trust them, trust us!" and whoever has the better image, the best marketing and exposure wins over the others.
What they're sometimes guilty of (in my judgement) is one-sided reporting. E.g., regarding illegal immigration, providing sympathetic personal stories of illegal immigrants, but not of the persons hurt by illegal immigration.
It's also possible they've gotten better about this. I stopped listening years ago.
Why? With how confidently you state that, I'm rather curious what reasons you have.
If you want a longer answer, George Orwell penned an eloquent one all the way back in 1944: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
As such, you end up with a large cohort of people believing immigrants eat their pets, vaccines have microchips in them and are more harmful than the diseases they protect against, 5g towers cause cancer, chemtrails are a thing, and trickle-down economics benefits working people.
Now, I may ultimately accept the idea that no matter what we do, we're always inevitably screwed, and even the smallest attempt to curtail speech will always end in an even worse outcome (like how there exist some infinities larger than others), but even I get a little uncomfortable being that nihilistic.
Not just a "foreign" government, but a government that is waging a hybrid war against the European Union, which includes disinformation through outlets such as RT.
- Al-Ahli hospital explosion (Oct 2023)
- Al-Shifa hospital “medical teams targeted” (Nov 2023)
- Summary executions claim (Dec 24)
- Aid‑centre shooting attribution (Jun 2025)
- Al‑Shifa “raid on medical teams” redux (Jun 2025)
Imagine if the journalists weren’t “forced to do pro Israel PR”.
BBC needs a proper external investigation on the levels of anti semitism that clearly permeate the ranks of their so called journalists.
Gaza doctor whose nine children were killed in Israeli strike dies from injuries (June 2)
Gaza now worse than hell on earth, humanitarian chief tells BBC (June 4)
Three journalists among five killed in Israeli strike on Gaza hospital (June 5)
Four killed near Gaza aid centre, health workers say (June 8)
Dozens of Palestinians killed while seeking aid in Gaza, hospitals say (June 11)
More than 20 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire near Gaza aid sites, Hamas-run ministry says (June 16)
Israeli forces kill 51 Palestinians waiting for flour at Gaza aid site, witnesses and rescuers say (June 17)
Eleven killed by Israeli fire while seeking aid in Gaza, rescuers say (June 18)
At least 12 Palestinians killed waiting for aid in Gaza, say medics (June 19)
Israeli military kills 23 Palestinians near aid site in Gaza, witnesses and medics say (June 20)
GHF boss defends Gaza aid operation after hundreds of Palestinians killed near sites (June 27)
At least 81 people killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza, Hamas-run health ministry says (June 28)
Israeli military investigates 'reports of harm to civilians' after hundreds killed near Gaza aid sites (June 30)
Hundreds of families displaced by wave of Israeli air strikes on Gaza, Palestinians say (June 30)
Dozens killed in Gaza as Israel intensifies bombardment, rescuers say (July 3)
Israel's strike on bustling Gaza café killed a Hamas operative - but dozens more people were killed (July 4)
How am I supposed to not see what I'm seeing with my lying eyes? I don't believe I'm capable of this tier of cognitive dissonance.
"Instead, the report says, the BBC’s coverage has involved the systematic dehumanisation of Palestinians and unquestioning acceptance of Israeli PR. This has allegedly been overseen by BBC Middle East Editor and apparent Binyamin Netanyahu admirer, Raffi Berg, who is accused by anonymous journalists of “micromanaging” the section." https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/bbc-impartiality-trust-isra...
Do you remember when headlines with Israel's atrocities would be rewritten to not upset them? This was <1y back even.
At least it seems widely reported on https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/100-bbc-insiders-pen-lette...
So it it seems like a legitimate letter, what's less clear is which, if any, of their pro Israeli articles are written by people who believe what they are saying...
2. Recent is the keyword. The tide of public sentiment has shifted somewhat against Israel in this conflict as the civilian casualties mount & theater of combat expands, so maybe it's easier to be a Brave Truth-Teller in the past 2 months of a conflict whose most recent flare-up dates back going on 2 years now.
3. These seem like fairly sanitized headlines considering what they're actually talking about. Consider the last one vs "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens, Though They Claim One Murdered Individual Among the Group Not So Innocent" or something. So even though some of the facts are getting reported on, how they're reported on (arguably almost as important) could still be an editorial decision from higher echelons.
This presumes the journalists are somehow neutral to begin with. If they're biased to be anti-israel, then arguably the top brass telling them to tone it down a notch would make the coverage more neutral.
>3. These seem like fairly sanitized headlines considering what they're actually talking about. Consider the last one vs "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens, Though They Claim One Murdered Individual Among the Group Not So Innocent" or something. So even though some of the facts are getting reported on, how they're reported on (arguably almost as important) could still be an editorial decision from higher echelons.
This presumes there's some Objectively Neutral™ version of a headline for a story, but how do know what that should be? Is the "Israeli Terrorist Strike Murders Dozens ..." wording supposed to be the neutral version? If that's the neutral version, I can't imagine what the anti-israeli version is supposed to be.
I don't think it presumes that, I'm just pointing out that the existence of articles reporting on Israeli war crimes doesn't preclude bias.
> How do you define what the neutral version of the headline should be?
I don't really believe that true neutrality exists, we're always exposed to biases. Which and to what degree are at question here. My hypothetical headline was specifically meant to highlight this - the same events can be reported on "accurately" in many ways, with many biases. The existence of those facts in a newspaper doesn't mean there's no bias. That's all.
I am curious as to when and how journalists use language. Looking at the headlines you chose, I see that some are written in active voice and some are in passive voice. When do journalists choose to use active voice over passive voice?
Well, you're capable of some level. The allegations in no way suggest that articles critical of Israel aren't run.
The entire population of Gaza was only ~2 million and Israel has now killed/wounded hundreds of thousands of Palestinians directly, and it's likely some multiple of that have been killed indirectly (starvation, disease, deaths of despair, etc). If this was China, we would have long since been calling it a systemic genocide, done all we could to economically sanction them out of existence, and perhaps even flirted with direct invasions which would entail risking not only WW3 but global nuclear warfare.
But because it's Israel, we're instead shipping them weapons to keep carrying out this "war" and the media continues framing it as just a regrettable conflict with unfortunate collateral damage.
Everyone here can identify the fake comments. They think they're slick but it's just the Streisand effect at this point.
Israeli citizens protesting against the genocide and war crimes rekindled faith that it's mostly the top of govts and military industrial complexes pushing for this.
Not just BBC, most media ended up out in the open this time around. Or maybe it has always been like this, we are just growing up now and taking notice.
But this is also the example coming to them from the top. On the occasions where Israel has clearly committed egregious violations, such as shooting at people massed at the aid dispensal locations or the medics who then got buried in shallow graves, Israel gets barely a whimper of criticism from European politicians - and apparently full-throated cheering and support from the US. The ICC arrest warrant is as forgotten as last year's snow.
So why are we surprised the BBC doesn't want to stick its head above the parapet?
Whenever a group publicly criticizes a behavior, you see the rhetorical question “Why are you surprised?”, and that feels dismissive and disingenuous.
Yes, BBC has some reasons to behave the way they do, sure. It’s really not relevant to the points being brought.
Every actor has reasons to behave. People are critical of the behavior, whatever the actor’s incentives are. Because a behavior feels more logical or rational it shouldn’t be discussed? If you would answer negatively then what’s the point of asking your question? Is it just to express your cynicism of that whole situation?
Animats•4h ago
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/jul/02/more-than-400-...
tareqak•4h ago
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n3926pSPNwXd8j7I716CBJEz...
tomhow•2h ago
tomhow•2h ago