BBC journalists have allegedly been “crying at work” over the corporation’s “dehumanising” coverage of Palestinians.
Concerns were raised during meeting this week that the BBC had been too lenient on Israel, with staff left crying in toilets and taking time off work over the approach to the conflict.
An email setting out fears that the BBC was “treating Israeli lives as more worthy than Palestinian lives” was sent to Tim Davie, the director-general.
“What Hamas did was atrocious and nobody is excusing its actions, but the mood from a lot of people in the building is that we aren't getting the coverage right,” a source told The Times.
“Staff have been crying in the toilets and freelancers have been sacrificing earnings by not showing up to work because of the distress caused.”
In another email to Davie, Beirut-based correspondent Rami Ruhayem said that he had “the gravest possible concerns” about the output.
“Words like ‘massacre’, ‘slaughter’ and ‘atrocities’ are being used prominently in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at all, in reference to actions by Israel,” he said.
“Does this not raise the question of the possible complicity of the BBC in incitement, dehumanisation and war propaganda?”
He claimed the BBC was frequently going easy on Israeli officials and allowing them “comfortable airtime”.
“The BBC has taken upon itself in recent years the task of fighting fake news, disinformation, hate speech and such things, a trend in western media,” he said.
“Where is the content analysing the flood of incitement against Palestinians and tracking its impact?”
Journalist John Simpson earlier this week said the BBC has received an almost equal number of complaints about it being biased towards and against Israel.
“People rail at the BBC because they hope they can force it to come down on their side; and when that doesn’t happen — and it’s not going to — they get angrier still,” he wrote in the New Statesman.
