Expert: Some Anti-Israel Media Coverage Can Only Be Explained by 'Antisemitism'
On an episode of the TV program Eretz Nehederet ("A Wonderful Country"), Israel's version of Saturday Night Live lampooned the BBC for what some say has been one-sided coverage of the war with Hamas.
An actress playing a BBC News anchor reports that "Israel has bombed a hospital, killing hundreds of innocent people." Then she demands the control room make the on-screen death toll higher.
While funny, widespread anti-Israel news coverage in the real world is shaping opinions and government policies.
The war between Israel and Hamas is raging not only within Gaza but also in newsrooms, and it's a media war many would say Hamas is winning.
Some major news organizations treat Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, as equal to or worse than Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group that massacred innocent Israelis.
And some have gotten into trouble by accepting as fact information put out by Hamas.
Gil Hoffman, the executive director of Honest Reporting, a pro-Israel media watchdog, says, "There's never been a war where the incorrect coverage has been so obvious, where the media has had to apologize over and over again, admit mistakes and have lost their credibility so much, as viewers realize that they cannot depend on the media to understand what's really happening."
After the Hamas atrocities committed on Oct. 7, many in the media repeatedly referred to the terrorist group as "gunmen" or "militants," rather than terrorists.
Major news organizations were quick to report claims made by Hamas that Israel bombed the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, causing 500 civilian casualties.
It was later found the damage came from an Islamic Jihad rocket and the casualties numbered in the dozens.
The BBC has been one of the main culprits. It had to apologize for a report that Israeli forces inside Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza were "targeting people as well as medical teams and Arabic speakers."
The BBC later called it a misquote.
This past summer the BBC was forced to apologize when an interviewer said to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet that "Israeli forces are happy to kill children."
The BBC was also reportedly forced to remove several Middle East reporters from the air after they posted on social media their support for the atrocities committed on Oct. 7.
Dr. Tricia Miller with the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA), says the anti-Israel bias in some news stories meets the definition of antisemitism.
Miller told CBN News, "Israel is consistently held to a different standard, a double standard. The only way you can explain that is anti-Semitism."
In response to criticism of its coverage, BBC CEO Deborah Turness wrote, "We have faced criticism and complaints that we are biased both for and against Israel, and for and against the Palestinians... And while we strive to hold true to our 100-year commitment to impartiality, we of course sometimes get it wrong... We will continue to do what we have always done: to work without fear or favor and report what we see."
However, news coverage doesn't occur in a vacuum, and biased coverage against Israel has a very real effect.
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