Reporting Gaza: Bias, Silence, and Islamophobia in the BBC

In episode 19 of Unpacking Islamophobia, Bridge Associate Director Mobashra Tazamal speaks with Faisal Hanif, a media analyst at the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) in the United Kingdom. They discuss CfMM’s latest report highlighting the systemic bias in the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza.

For nearly two years, Israel’s assault on Gaza—described by leading human rights organizations and UN experts as a genocide—has involved relentless bombing, forced starvation, the destruction of every university in the Strip, and the near-total collapse of the healthcare system. Israel’s violence in Gaza has produced the highest number of child amputees in the world and become the deadliest conflict for journalists in modern history.

At least 62,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 17,500 children. And because civil society has been decimated and tens of thousands remain buried under rubble, some academic estimates suggest the real death toll could be in the hundreds of thousands. But if you’re relying on Western media, much of this information is minimized—or missing altogether.

Since the war began on October 7th, 2023, following Hamas’s attack on Israel, Western media coverage has consistently shown a troubling pattern of bias: downplaying Palestinian suffering while centering Israeli narratives. A new report from the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), titled “BBC on Gaza-Israel: One Story, Double Standards,” offers hard data to back this up. The report analyzed over 35,000 pieces of BBC content and found a clear trend: Palestinian voices and pain were routinely sidelined, while Israeli perspectives were given emotional depth and prominence.

Click here to read CfMM’s report.

Featuring

Faisal Hanif is a media analyst at the Centre for Media Monitoring and a writer focusing on Islamophobia and British Islam. He has authored major reports on the British Media’s coverage on Israel’s war on Gaza, coverage of Terrorism, and a major two-year study of Islam in the British media. He has previously worked as a news reporter and researcher at the Times and the BBC.

Mobashra Tazamal is the Associate Director of The Bridge Initiative. Her work focuses on the impact of the War on Terror discourse and state-sponsored Islamophobia around the globe. Given her expertise, she serves as a resource for educators and journalists, and her analysis has been cited in global media outlets such as the New York Times, NBC, Salon, Washington Post, and Al Jazeera. In addition to publishing articles and reports for Bridge, her analysis has also been featured in The Independent, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Truthout, The New Arab, and Byline times. She holds a Master’s degree from SOAS, University of London.