Before publishing our in-depth analysis of BBC articles on the Mideast conflict (pdf format), we forwarded an advance copy to the Beeb for a response. We found a quantifiable imbalance between Palestinian and Israeli perspectives quoted, a lack of historical context, and other examples of "soft bias."
They never replied. But the BBC gave a response to the Jewish Chronicle. It was — unfortunately — the party line we expected to hear:
A BBC spokeswoman said: "It's not uncommon to hear these sorts of findings from pressure groups but our role is to provide independent reporting and analysis of all perspectives of a story, so our audiences can make sense of what's going on themselves.
"The independent panel set up by our board of governors found no deliberate or systematic bias in the BBC coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict."
Does the BBC's shoot-the-messenger approach reflect an inability to refute the points we raised, or just arrogance?
Read HonestReporting's In-Depth Media Analyis of the BBC's coverage and judge for yourself.
