The media’s coverage of the release of three Israeli hostages from Hamas captivity on Saturday was the worst we’ve seen in any of the almost-weekly prisoner exchanges since the ceasefire deal was struck last month.
Several major news outlets drew grotesque comparisons between well-fed Palestinian detainees—most of whom were jailed for violent and deadly offenses—and the visibly emaciated Israeli hostages Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami, who spent 491 days underground, malnourished, and subjected to torture. The false equivalence was so extreme that Israel’s Government Press Office (GPO) issued a statement Saturday evening condemning these attempts to blur the distinction between convicted criminals and their victims.
HonestReporting called out—and successfully secured corrections from—several international news organizations, including NBC News and The Washington Post, whose reporting fell below even the most basic ethical standards.
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Many outlets we engage with—whether through our broad social media reach that publicly exposes bad journalism or through direct discussions with editors and reporters—are at least willing to correct their mistakes. Sometimes, these amendments, retractions, and clarifications take time, but they do happen.
Then there’s the BBC—the outlier.
Despite being funded by UK taxpayers via the television licensing fee, the BBC repeatedly refuses to engage with legitimate criticism of its biased Israel coverage—both before and since Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
Rather than ensuring accuracy before publication or promptly correcting errors, the BBC resists taking action until it is quite literally forced to—usually after an intense and coordinated backlash makes the misreporting impossible to ignore.
The result? Barely a month goes by without the BBC issuing a public correction and apology—a recurring embarrassment gleefully reported by UK media as yet another example of the broadcaster’s journalistic failures.
And this latest hostage exchange was no exception.
Last Friday, the BBC was once again forced into a public apology after one of its news anchors, Nicky Schiller, referred to the three Israeli hostages as “Israeli prisoners” of Hamas. Hours later, the network issued an on-air correction and apology, calling it a mistake.
But what kind of honest “mistake” is immediately repeated within 24 hours?
The very next day, as the BBC covered the release of the three emaciated hostages—exchanged for 183 Palestinian prisoners—it ran a glaringly misleading strapline across the bottom of its live news coverage: “Concerns over [the] appearance of hostages on both sides.” [Emphasis added]
“Concerns over appearance of hostages on both sides” — @BBCNews.
There are no “both sides” here.
What a disgusting false moral equivalence between actual Israeli hostages held by Hamas & Palestinian prisoners jailed for terror offenses.
It’s the BBC. Why aren’t we surprised? pic.twitter.com/FbCUZTk7mC
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 9, 2025
Let’s set aside the fact that the appearance of three starved, brutalized Israelis sparked far more than mere “concerns”—with their skeletal frames drawing comparisons to Nazi concentration camp survivors. Who at the BBC—whether an editor, subeditor, or journalist—thought this grotesque false equivalence between convicted criminals and innocent hostages was remotely appropriate?
And if anyone still believes these incidents were just “mistakes,” as the BBC insists, or mere sloppiness, fast forward another 12 hours to high-profile BBC anchor Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday morning interview with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
In a brazen display of false equivalence, Kuenssberg used the horrifying condition of the freed Israeli hostages as a springboard to push baseless allegations of abuse in Israeli prisons—a remark Herzog rightly called “outrageous” for its vile moral equivalence.
Here’s the clip that @BBCPolitics hasn’t posted:
Israel’s President @Isaac_Herzog calls out the BBC for its consistent attempts to create a false moral equivalence between Israel and Palestinian terrorists.@bbclaurak, where’s your moral compass gone? https://t.co/2TYxjfiw0y pic.twitter.com/XePm7iBkaI
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 9, 2025
By now, it’s abundantly clear: this isn’t a string of unfortunate editorial slip-ups.
This is a pattern.
Whether it’s drawing a grotesque equivalence between Israeli hostages and the terrorists who kidnapped them and murdered their families, or describing 9-year-old Emily Hand—who was violently abducted from her kibbutz on October 7—as simply having “gone missing” (as the BBC did on Sunday—and has yet to correct), the BBC has made its position clear.
Emily Hand did not simply go “missing from Be’eri,” @BBCNews.
She did not walk out of her kibbutz into Gaza. Hamas terrorists abducted her.
Why is it so difficult for the BBC to give agency to Palestinian terrorists? pic.twitter.com/a33NGEsC4x
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 10, 2025
And that position isn’t just at odds with journalistic integrity—it diverges sharply from the stance of the UK government, which designates Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist organization. It also clashes with the views of the British public, three-quarters of whom see Islamism—the ideology Hamas espouses—as the greatest extremist threat facing the UK.
This time, the BBC’s bias must be properly scrutinized.
The broadcaster has repeatedly defended its disgraceful coverage, particularly its insistence on “both-siding” the conflict in the name of so-called impartiality. But when “balance” means whitewashing terrorism and dehumanizing its victims, it’s time to call it what it is: a complete failure of journalism.
The corporation’s ongoing insistence on applying this warped notion of impartiality to Hamas—a terrorist organization banned in the UK, one that Britons are legally prohibited from supporting under the UK’s Terrorism Act—speaks volumes about the editorial decisions coming from the top.
Those in charge at the BBC are making a choice—a choice to repeatedly equate Islamist terrorists, murderers, and rapists with their victims; a choice to defend this grotesque distortion of reality rather than correct it; and a choice that filters down through every level of its news coverage.
Unless the BBC’s taxpayer funding is cut, this will not stop.
The truth is, the BBC is rotten to its core—and its audiences deserve better.
They deserve a public broadcaster that serves them, not one that sympathizes with the extremists who seek to destroy them and their way of life.
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Credit: EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images
