How The Guardian and BBC got swept up in a wave of anti-Semitism

For Israeli satirists, the BBC’s coverage of the Hamas conflict was simply too good to resist.

In a sketch on Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s answer to Saturday Night Live, actors lampooned the British broadcaster’s coverage of a rocket attack on a hospital in Gaza with a spoof news bulletin.

“More, more,” urges the stern-looking presenter, clad in a blonde wig, as the number of alleged fatalities from the attack jumps randomly higher. “We love Hamas,” reads the scrolling text below.

For Israeli sketch writers, the routine provided some light relief as the country continues to reel from the impact of Hamas’s atrocities on October 7.

But beneath the comic veneer lies serious concern. Across Israel, and around the world, frustrations have grown at how many parts of the media have reported the conflict.

The BBC, a lightning rod for controversy, has found itself at the centre of the firefight. But it is not alone. Publications including The Guardian and the New York Times have repeatedly come under criticism from politicians and Jewish groups amid allegations of bias and even anti-Semitism in their coverage.

For many observers, the conflict has exposed a clear hypocrisy in how Left-leaning media outlets, who pride themselves on their progressive stance, approach stories about Israel. And behind the scenes at these organisations, bosses are grappling with divisions among their politically-charged employees as tensions bubble to the surface.

So as the conflict drags on and the threat of escalation lingers, will the media emerge unscathed as the western Left indulges in Hamas’s poison?

‘Unbelievably crass’

Since the terror attacks of October 7, all news outlets have been plunged into a quagmire of confusion, disinformation and conflicting testimony. But amid all this, it is those organisations to the left of the political spectrum – whether in their internal culture or more overtly in their output – that have found themselves most often under pressure.

The BBC, New York Times, Reuters and Press Association were all forced to backtrack over their breathless reporting of the blast at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza that killed hundreds of Palestinians.

The media outlets were quick to conclude that the explosion had been caused by an Israeli strike, despite relying on Hamas officials as their key source. US intelligence officials now believe the blast was caused by a failed rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The BBC apologised for speculating on the cause of the explosion, but not before Israel accused the broadcaster of perpetuating a “modern blood libel” – a reference to false claims dating back to the Middle Ages that Jews killed Christian boys.

US President Joe Biden was reportedly furious at the New York Times’s credulous coverage, warning it could have led to an escalation in the Middle East. The US newspaper offered a full apology, admitting its editors “should have taken more care with the initial presentation, and been more explicit about what information could be verified”.

While the hospital blast marked the nadir of press coverage of the conflict to date, it is far from an isolated incident.

The BBC was forced to launch an urgent investigation after several of its journalists in the Middle East appeared to celebrate the Hamas attacks.

Meanwhile, the public service broadcaster has tied itself in knots over its refusal to brand Hamas a terrorist organisation, opting instead to use the word “militants”.

Isaac Herzog, the president of Israel, branded the policy “atrocious”, while officials threatened to cut off access for the broadcaster.

The BBC has since backtracked on its stance, and opted for a loophole of describing Hamas as a group proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the Government.

John Simpson, world affairs editor, has defended the approach, insisting that terrorism is a “loaded word” and that it’s “simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn”.

Yet the broadcaster’s aversion to the word “terrorist” appears to be selective. In the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings in 2005, then-head of news Roger Mosey said the BBC “[had] used and will continue to use the words terror, terrorism and terrorist”.

When gunmen and bombers launched an attack in Paris a decade later, killing 130 people, they too were described as terrorists.

Furious debates over language may seem parochial, but on topics as fraught as the Israel-Palestine conflict, words matter.

When a murderous mob stormed the Dagestan airport in Russia in search of Jewish passengers from Israel, the Associated Press newswire described the incident as a “protest”. This, in turn, was picked up by publishers including the Washington Post.

And when a Gazan who featured in a 2019 BBC documentary said revolutionary songs “encourage you to rip a Yehudi’s head off”, the broadcaster caused controversy by translating the Arabic word to “Israeli” instead of “Jew”.

For the BBC, this muddled approach to language has been further complicated by the botched merger of its News and World News channels earlier this year, which has injected more international news into the channel’s output.

Roger Mosey, former head of BBC News, says the broadcaster’s coverage has been “generally pretty fair”, but adds that the merger has made things harder.

“You could argue that for very good reasons to do with international audiences, you then have to adjust what you do in the UK,” he says.

“I can see the argument for consistent guidelines, but the fact is that the BBC’s primary accountability is to its UK audiences.”

The crisis has not escaped MPs on the backbench 1922 committee, who summoned director general Tim Davie to a private meeting last week. Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, said he had “never been so disappointed” in the corporation.

Meanwhile, the Board of Deputies of British Jews also held a meeting with Davie and other top executives, after which it said the BBC had been “left in no doubt as to the strength of feeling in the Jewish community”.

It would be wrong to suggest that the criticism has all come from one side. The BBC’s London headquarters were last month doused in red paint by a pro-Palestine group that accused the broadcaster of having “blood on its hands” over its coverage of the conflict.

Deborah Turness, chief executive of BBC News, has said the war is “one of the most complex and polarising stories we have ever had to cover”, but admits: “We cannot afford to simply say that if both sides are criticising us, we’re getting things right.”

Professor David Feldman, director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism, says: “It’s clearly very important for news organisations to have a commitment to pluralism, and it’s important for us to be aware that this is a time of mounting Islamophobia as well as mounting anti-Semitism.”

Yet time and time again it is Left-wing news organisations that find themselves in the eye of the storm.

The Guardian last month sacked cartoonist Steve Bell over an unpublished drawing of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was interpreted by some as a reference to Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice who demands a “pound of flesh”.

Bell insists he was sacked because he went public with his complaints about the editorial process, rather than because of the cartoon. However, a source at the newspaper refutes this, pointing to previous examples of controversial cartoons. Bell will remain on the payroll until his contract expires in April.

Nor is Bell the only Guardian cartoonist to be accused of anti-Semitism. Earlier this year, Martin Rowson apologised after his drawing of former BBC chairman Richard Sharp was widely condemned.

The newspaper has also come under fire for its decision to publish an opinion piece by Israeli-American historian Raz Segal entitled: “Israel must stop weaponising the Holocaust”.

The Board of Deputies branded the article “unbelievably crass” and said The Guardian had hit a “new low”. The paper defended the piece, saying its “opinion columns aim to provide a range of views on important and complex world events”.

ITV News, meanwhile, was forced to apologise for its “astonishingly bad decision” to air an interview with Latifa Abouchakra, a journalist for Iranian state TV, who described the Hamas attacks as a “moment of triumph”.

In the US, the New York Times has been widely criticised for its decision to re-hire a Gazan freelance journalist Soliman Hijjy even after he was found to have posted support for Adolf Hitler on social media. The newspaper defended its decision, saying it had taken steps to ensure Hijjy complied with its standards.

Even the world of satire has not escaped criticism for its coverage of the conflict.

Private Eye’s cartoonist, Zoom Rockman, this week resigned saying he was “disrespected” by bosses’ failure to acknowledge death threats against him in the wake of the magazine’s controversial cover about the Hamas attacks.

In a statement, Private Eye said it contacted Rockman as soon as it found out about the threat, adding: “We spoke to him at length yesterday. He did not approve of last issue’s cover and no longer wishes to contribute to the magazine. This is entirely up to him but it is a matter of regret for us.”

‘Decolonial’ worldview

Whether through overt anti-Semitism or more subtle uses of language, the controversy has shed light on the contradictions embedded within Left-wing media outlets.

While claiming to speak truth to power and be an arbiter of morality, the publications appear blind to the prejudices espoused by many of their employees, and in turn in their coverage.

At the heart of the issue is a liberal worldview bias that paints Israel as the oppressor.

“On the Left, racism – of which anti-Semitism is a part – has always been seen in terms of oppressor and oppressed,” says Tory peer Baron Wolfson of Tredegar.

“So, if you’re white and middle class, it’s very difficult to see how you can be the victim of racism.”

He adds: “And then you apply that to Israel. You say Israel is a colonialist project, and therefore it can only ever be the oppressor. It can never be the victim.”

Professor Feldman says: “Parts of the revolutionary Left and parts of the decolonial Left take the view that might is right so long as the might is exercised by the oppressed in acts of resistance.”

However, he adds that this is not the response of the entire Left: “I would say the mainstream liberal Left response is cast in terms of international law.”

For organisations that lean to the Left, however, this worldview inevitably begins to seep through into coverage.

Bari Weiss, a journalist who left the New York Times in 2020 after accusing the paper of fostering an “illiberal environment”, adds that news organisations are “a reflection of their people”.

“This is what happens when a newspaper is overrun by reporters and editors, trained at elite schools, who have embraced a ‘decolonial’ worldview,” she says.

And while this approach is purportedly rooted in progressive ideology, it opens up a blind spot to the atrocities committed by Hamas and the suffering of people in Israel.

“The average person in the street has no truck with terror and can recognise a terrorist when they see one,” says Baron Wolfson.i

“What baffles me is that for some people who are meant to be clever, whether that’s in academia, universities, sections of the media commentariat, for them, it becomes difficult apparently. Particular sections of society seem to find it difficult to put on their moral spectacles.”

For media organisations tasked with reporting on the conflict, this institutional blindness has severe consequences.

Danny Cohen, former director of BBC Television, says the broadcaster’s reporting on both the initial Hamas attack and subsequent conflict have been a “failure of both journalistic credibility and public duty”.

Writing in the Telegraph last month, he said: “The thing is mistakes happen once, maybe twice. When they happen multiple times they are not mistakes. They are institutional fault lines which reveal bias and deep-rooted prejudice.”

Baron Wolfson refers to a “differential treatment” in the way the BBC approaches stories about Israel.

“It’s a bit like during Brexit, people said: ‘The BBC just find it hard to conceive of people who are pro-Brexit’,” he says. “I think there’s an element in the BBC that finds it hard to conceive of people who are Zionist.”

Yet it is not only the public that suffers when media organisations fall short. A damning first-person piece published in Jewish News this week highlights the extent of the impact on Jewish staff at The Guardian.

In the article, the anonymous employee says the newspaper’s coverage and the attitude of their colleagues meant they no longer felt safe at work.

Suzanne Moore, who left The Guardian in 2020 after a row over the newspaper’s trans coverage, says the incident “came as no surprise”.

“I never went into the office there except to the meeting to decide whether the paper would back Corbyn or not in the last election,” she says.

“I said no because of anti-Semitism. Still, a number of Jewish writers wanted to and lots of people, as far as I am concerned, did not get it. It’s only got worse since then.”

A Guardian spokesman said the Jewish News article did not “bear any resemblance to the workplace culture at The Guardian”.

“We do not recognise the events described and are seeking to ask the individual concerned to share specific information about any incidents so that we can investigate the facts fully,” they said.

“The Guardian and Observer’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict continues to be expert, thorough and fair. This is a profoundly distressing time, and we have offered support and assistance to staff who are personally affected.”

Trans parallels

But the Israel-Hamas conflict is not an isolated phenomenon. Rather it is a new fault line in a wider crisis at the heart of liberal media.

The BBC has been repeatedly rocked by accusations of Left-wing bias. This was most clearly illustrated when Gary Lineker almost brought down Tim Davie earlier this year when he refused to apologise for likening language used by Home Secretary Suella Braverman about immigration to that of the Nazi party.

The BBC appears to be waking up to the problem, however. The broadcaster has announced a shake-up of its internal governance that will see Davie take direct charge of its complaints unit.

The move will help to assuage complaints from ministers that the corporation is failing to take allegations of bias seriously enough.

At The Guardian, which is not bound by impartiality requirements, the Left-wing stance is overt. Yet the various factions within the Left of British politics are still causing issues for bosses.

The newspaper veered sharply to the Left during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party – an era that prompted deep divides in the newsroom.

Since then, editor Kath Viner has battled to purge far-Left factions, though the newspaper is still plagued by these divisions. In February, readers attacked The Guardian over an editorial that appeared to defend Corbyn over anti-Semitism in Labour.

And the conflict in Israel is not the only cause of internal tensions under the watch of Viner, who in 2005 wrote a play with actor Alan Rickman about the killing of a pro-Palestine activist by an Israeli soldier.

For several years, the newspaper has been grappling with a trans row that has split its workforce down the middle and led to the departure of high-profile columnists such as Hadley Freeman and Suzanne Moore.

One Guardian staff member defends Viner’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict, saying: “Kath isn’t stupid, she’s keeping a lid on it and it’s largely been a steady ship.”

But the source warns that the trans dispute continues to split both The Guardian’s readership and its workforce, adding: “If anything topples her, I guarantee it’s going to be the trans row.”

The newsroom row has been echoed at the New York Times, which was engulfed in its own culture war earlier this year when more than 180 writers accused it of “bigotry and pseudoscience” in its coverage of trans issues.

In a separate dispute, the newspaper was hit by a backlash over the publication of an opinion piece by Senator Tom Cotton that called for troops to be deployed to quell protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police officers.

That row led to the departure of two newly-joined opinion editors, Weiss and James Bennet. In her scathing resignation letter, Weiss warned of a  “new consensus in the press” by which the truth had become an “orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else”.

Activist young staff

The internal turmoil highlights the splintering within many news organisations – and the failure of bosses to keep these divisions under wraps.

The trend can be blamed in part on the rise of social media, which has led to the emergence of the journalist as a brand.

Social media sites such as X, formerly known as Twitter, give reporters and columnists a platform to express their own views, which often do not align with those of their employer.

This is even more acute for the BBC, which must balance its commitment to impartiality with the whims of its outspoken stars. After the Lineker incident earlier this year, the broadcaster issued new social media rules in an effort to rein in the most politically active presenters.

For all organisations, however, the rise of social media has allowed individual employees to share their personal views publicly – often with embarrassing consequences.

Jewish News this week revealed that Chante’ Joseph, The Guardian’s pop culture columnist who also presents a podcast for the newspaper, shared numerous posts on social media casting doubts on the scale of the Hamas attacks and propagating conspiracy theories about Jewish power and control.

Joseph, who presented a documentary for Channel 4 entitled How Not To Be Racist, has apologised and deleted the posts, but continues to work as a freelancer for the paper.

A Guardian spokesman said: “These are completely unacceptable social media posts by a freelance contributor. Senior managers are taking this very seriously and have spoken to the person concerned, who is deeply regretful at their lapse in judgement and has immediately deleted the posts.

“They have also been reminded of the social media guidelines that all staff and contributors are expected to follow.”

The fast-paced nature of social media also makes verification more difficult and errors more likely, even for experienced correspondents.

Mosey says that established news outlets are “not driven by what happened 16 seconds ago and bunging it on air and hoping it’s kind of alright”.

“What you should do is be more measured and judicious,” he says. “Twitter is the enemy of that, so I wish people weren’t on Twitter.”

Meanwhile, media companies are grappling with the rise of activist employees, particularly among the younger generation.

One former journalist points to a rise in staff groups in newsrooms and the growing influence of identity politics.

“We didn’t really have an awareness when I was in the newsroom,” the source says. “We knew where people came, or ethnic background or sexuality, but it wasn’t ever really an issue in the coverage, whereas I get the sense it has become more so.”

This is no more evident than at the New York Times, where dozens of writers rebelled against the newspaper’s trans coverage.

In a sign of further unrest, employees at the Gray Lady this week staged a strike over Zoom in protest against what they claim are the newspaper’s attempts to “coerce” workers back to the office. Some protestors dressed in Halloween costumes to show that they were not “scared” of the New York Times’s alleged anti-union tactics.

These inner conflicts come at a crucial time. With disinformation rife on social media platforms such as Facebook, X and TikTok, trusted media outlets play a crucial role in verifying information and cutting through the noise.

John Whittingdale, media minister, says: “With a deluge of disinformation and fabricated stories, particularly around conflicts like those in Israel and Ukraine, the need for reliable and accurate professional journalism has never been greater.”

So as media groups wrestle with internal politics, experts warn that bosses must keep control of their newsrooms and be alive to how their coverage is impacting Jewish communities.

“I think news media need to be on the alert to recognise anti-Semitism wherever it arises,” says Professor Feldman. “There is a history in which some on the Left have not always been alert to anti-Semitism when it’s in front of them.”