Media Bias Report Highlights Distorted Coverage of War on Gaza in UK
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - UK news chiefs have defended their coverage of Israel’s brutalities in Gaza, despite a new report revealing significant distortions in Western media reporting on the Israeli war.
The report, titled "Media Bias Gaza 2023-24," was released by the Center for Media Monitoring (CFMM) on Wednesday. It analyzed data from 28 UK online media websites over a one-month period starting from October 7, 2023.
The study, which examined over 200,000 articles and TV reports, concluded that the British media had not represented the Gaza conflict impartially.
Speaking at the CFMM event in the House of Parliament, Richard Burgess, the BBC's director of news content, acknowledged that mistakes were inevitable for a 24-hour news channel.
“It’s impossible not to make mistakes, we will make mistakes,” Burgess said, defending their coverage.
However, the CFMM report highlighted that "many prominent media personalities, senior editors, and journalists repeated Islamophobic stereotypes about Muslim belief and identity, aiming to undermine the Palestinian cause and/or Palestinian advocates.”
The study also noted “how some media outlets and commentators have framed the conflict as being between Muslims and Jews."
“Muslim opposition to Israel has been framed as anti-Semitic by some publications and commentators,” the study said
Jonathan Levy, managing director and executive editor at Sky News, disputed several points in the report, including reducing the conflict to an “Israel-Hamas” war.
The report revealed that Israelis were 11 times more likely to be referred to as “victims of attacks” compared to Palestinians. Additionally, 76 percent of online articles framed the conflict as an “Israel-Hamas war,” with only 24 percent mentioning “Palestine/Palestinian,” indicating a lack of context.
Marwan Yaghi, a Palestinian diplomat in the UK, criticized the media coverage as “appallingly biased.”
The report also highlighted that right-wing news channels and publications in Britain misrepresented pro-Palestinian protesters as anti-Semitic.
It further mentioned that pro-Palestinian voices were misrepresented and vilified by media outlets, with allegations of anti-Semitism and terrorism being used to discredit legitimate advocacy efforts.
The report also noted a lack of scrutiny around several stories perpetuated in the press, citing 361 mentions of the false “beheaded babies” story.