The BBC and the problem of impartiality

The culture secretary has warned that the BBC risks losing the public's trust, after accusing the broadcaster of bias over the Israel-Hamas war.

"Audiences are feeling like impartiality and the BBC is on a downward trajectory," Lucy Frazer told Times Radio on Monday. The BBC is "a fantastic public institution", she said, but "what we've been hearing is that some audiences think it's biased".

Pushed on the difference between perception and reality, Frazer argued that "there are only perceptions, and perceptions are important" – particularly, she added, because the corporation is "funded by the public". 

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What has the government said on BBC bias?

The government has so far focused on "public perceptions of bias", but "there is an obvious problem with this approach", wrote media expert Raymond Snoddy for The Media Leader. "Perception of bias is not the same as the real thing."

"I think that on occasion it has been biased," Frazer later told Sky News's Kay Burley. She used the BBC's account of an attack on a Gaza hospital as an example. The news service initially reported the Hamas-run health ministry's claim that an Israeli airstrike was to blame, but Western intelligence later concluded that a misfiring Palestinian rocket was likely the cause. 

The BBC is "operationally and editorially independent", Frazer repeatedly told GB News. But on the same day, she wrote in The Daily Telegraph that "a major challenge for the BBC continues to be impartiality". She continued: "It cannot be inputted on a computer, and it is not a science. Impartiality requires thought and it requires accountability."

Rishi Sunak's spokesperson initially "declined to say whether the prime minister agreed with Frazer's comments about the BBC", said The Guardian. When questioned, Sunak said: "We have a free and fair press and impartiality is at the heart of what makes the BBC a strong institution." 

But Downing Street "subsequently clarified that Sunak agrees with Frazer", said The Times. A source told the paper that "the BBC has got work to do on bias, hence why Ofcom have been given more oversight". 

Tory minister Huw Merriman was later "skewered" by Kay Burley, said HuffPost, after claiming that satirical BBC Radio 4 show "The News Quiz" was an example of BBC bias.

Merriman described it as a "diatribe against Conservatives". Burley pointed out that there was "a clear difference between satire and the corporation's news output". 

Is the BBC biased over the Israel-Hamas war?

In November, only one in 25 of British Jews polled by Campaign Against Antisemitism said they were satisfied with the BBC's coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, with most believing it to be biased against the state of Israel. The poll was conducted a month after eight BBC journalists criticised the corporation for what they saw as anti-Palestinian bias in its coverage. 

But a poll conducted by the More in Common think tank in November found roughly equal numbers of people thought the BBC's coverage to be pro-Israel (17%) as think it is pro-Palestine (15%), with even more (36%) feeling its output on the conflict had been mostly neutral. As Press Gazette noted, people's personal positions towards either Israel or Palestine significantly affected their perceptions of bias. 

"It is extraordinarily difficult to get the balance right, and there will inevitably be imperfections in the daily bulletins across multiple services," said former head of BBC News Roger Mosey in The Independent. 

However, "nobody has provided convincing evidence that there is a long-term tilt, either towards Israel or the Palestinians", he said. 

What could change with how the BBC is regulated?

Ofcom currently regulates the BBC's TV, radio and on-demand output, but the government said oversight should be extended to digital services to allow the watchdog to hold the BBC to account "in a more robust way". 

After complaints about bias rose by 50% last year, Frazer "set out reforms including plans for Ofcom, the media regulator, to police the BBC's news website and YouTube channel" as part of the mid-term review of the corporation's charter, said The Times. The reforms "follow fierce criticism of the BBC's coverage of the war in Gaza", said The Daily Telegraph, "and its refusal to brand Hamas a terrorist organisation".

One useful idea is to "move the final stage of its complaints process on alleged bias – Gary Lineker’s tweets and the like – to Ofcom", writes Anne McElvoy for the i news site. This would mean the BBC would no longer "be judge and jury in its own major controversies, which is hard going on everyone involved".

But attacking bias is "also about figuring out where coverage that the market or algorithms do not support should figure in the future, and how they can avoid extinction".