THE BBC is losing the trust of its viewers in its coverage of Israel and Palestine by failing to thoroughly contextualise Israel’s actions, an expert has said.
Dr Tom Mills, who analysed the corporation in The BBC: Myth of a Public Service in 2016, collected data via Nexis UK to determine how often the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or International Criminal Court (ICC) is mentioned in BBC news reports in relation to Israel and Gaza coverage.
Mills found the bodies were "almost never" mentioned. In more than 200 BBC1 reports he collected mentioning Israel and Gaza between February 20 and March 19 this year, the institutions were only mentioned five times.
This is despite the ICJ saying Israel is under an obligation to end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as rapidly as possible, cease all new settlement activities, evacuate settlers, and make reparations for damages caused.
The ICJ also said Palestinians' right to be protected from genocide faced a “plausible” risk from Israel last year.
In November 2024, judges at the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
When speaking to The National, Mills further noted in two of the five mentions of the ICJ and ICC, the institutions had been cited by guests being interviewed and not by the BBC itself.
He said it seemed clear the BBC does not routinely mention either body.
“The most substantive discussion around the ICJ and the ICC was coming from a foreign policy analyst guest,” Mills said.
“The other incidents were similar. You would have programme guests raising these issues, often with the BBC almost posing the other side.
“It seems pretty clear from this provisional scoping that although its mentioned, it’s never routinely [mentioned] in the context of coverage of Israel or Palestine.”
Asked if he felt people had lost trust in the BBC in the coverage of this issue, he said: “Yes I think so. I’d be very surprised if people who are involved in Palestinian activism, or anybody that’s been following the conflict closely and watches the BBC regularly, isn’t going to see the disjoint there.”
In the data collected by Mills, the BBC reported on February 21 that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s absence from the G20 meeting in South Africa was “linked to the Trump administration's objections to South Africa's land appropriation law and its genocide case against Israel at the ICJ.”
On March 2, the BBC interviewed Middle East analyst Jean-Loup Samaan, who whilst discussing Israel’s blocking of humanitarian aid into Gaza noted that the ICC and the ICJ considered this a war crime.
Wanted to determine how often the ICC or ICJ is mentioned by the BBC in its routine reporting on Israel-Palestine. The answer (based on this admittedly crude analysis) seems to be: almost never.🧵
— Tom Mills (@ta_mills) March 19, 2025
On March 5 the BBC interviewed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, asking him: “Do you still believe that the ICC and the ICJ have international credibility?, given Israel’s claim that the courts were “acting with antisemitic motive”.
The ICJ case was also mentioned in passing during the period on March 8 and 9 in reports on US relations with South Africa – which brought the case against Israel to the ICJ.
He said: “The allegation against the BBC which I think is well founded is that Israel tends to be seen as a legitimate political actor which in various ways might exceed or go over the mark in its actions, but there’s normally a good faith interpretation of what Israel is doing.
“Then what falls out the picture is these routine acts of violence, like breaking of ceasefires for example, or the ongoing occupation of Palestine – it just isn’t something that seems to routinely feature.
“This is something you see in the more substantive research, which is that people don’t go away from the coverage of Israel/Palestine with an understanding that the Palestinians are occupied people.”
He added: “There is a lot of concern within the BBC itself as well about the extent to which impartiality seems to be sort of construed as balancing Israeli opinion with what in other contexts would be seen as authoritative bodies.
“So no one is expecting the BBC in the way it construes impartiality to say ‘Oh Israel is an aggressive actor’. However, there is a need to contextualise what Israel is doing.”
It comes after former BBC news journalist Karishma Patel – who left the corporation because of its Gaza coverage – told The National she felt a “massive disjunct” between what she was seeing happening in Gaza and what the BBC was “choosing to do editorially”.
Patel described how she became frustrated with what she felt were differences in language the BBC was using when talking about Palestinians and Israelis, calling for more “editorial consistency”.
In a column, Patel said the BBC needs to conclude Israel is violating international law and shape its coverage around that going forward.
“It’s classic BBC because the voices they are most attentive to are those which are most well-organised in media and in parliament, so they’re quite amenable to right-wing pressure and organised pressure from Israel lobby organisations,” he said.
“I think the BBC always has to balance its reputation among elite audiences, but also its broad public legitimacy. I think in recent years this has been more difficult because being able to reflect elite consensus but also be seen as the legitimate source of information, when it comes to something like Israel/Gaza, it’s almost impossible to do both.”
He added: “The contrast between people’s understanding of what’s going on [largely from social media] and the BBC’s reporting of it is obviously damaging.”
Like Patel, Mills said he would like to see more consistency from the BBC on Israel and Palestine which he suggested would help it better meet its impartiality obligations.
He said: “What is impartiality? It’s taking a non-partisan position on the conflict, so if you’re non-partisan that means being consistent in how you describe different parties.
“At the same time, I wouldn’t say impartiality means you treat both sides equally. It means you make discriminatory judgements about relevant contexts.
“The consistent thing about the Israel and Palestine conflict has been to not do that, to not provide a context to the violence.
“I’d be interested to look at how often the context for Israel’s war crimes is mentioned, in other words the October 7 attacks, in BBC reporting, in order to understand the ferocity of the Israel response. That’s context which can help people to understand what’s going on but you never get that from the other side.
“So it’s about consistency, relevant contexts, and allowing people to make their own judgements. There’s a lot of evidence now there is a significant discontent at the BBC now over how this has been reported.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC has reported and will continue to report on court proceedings and rulings related to both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice relating to the conflict.”
