THE BBC, like media internationally, has “in no way covered” the loss of Palestinian life as it has the loss of Israeli life, a former top BBC host has said.
Mishal Husain, who fronted the BBC General Election debates and presented on Radio 4’s Today show before announcing her departure for Bloomberg last November, told British Vogue that all media was “completely hamstrung” by Israel’s refusal to allow journalists into the Gaza strip.
Palestinian reporters within Gaza have been targeted by Israel in its siege of the region, with more than 200 journalists and media workers killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, according to a statement from the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate earlier this month.
And in the West Bank, “dozens of journalists .. have been detained and remain in Israeli prisons”, according to a statement from Reporters Without Borders (RSF) last October.
Husain said there was a deliberate strategy from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to limit reporting on Palestine.
“The lack of access [to Gaza] is a media strategy that has fundamentally affected reporting of Palestinian civilian life,” she told Vogue.
“There is a humanitarian crisis that is ongoing, which covers thousands of children, women and civilian men who have not only been killed but maimed and bereaved in ways that you and I, anyone living a life in comfortable circumstances, can’t even imagine.”
Asked if she believed the BBC had done a “fair job” in its coverage of the Israeli assault on Palestine since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Husain said of her time on the Today programme: “There wasn’t anything I couldn’t say and there wasn’t a question I couldn’t ask.”
However, she went on: “I think all international media is completely hamstrung in its coverage of this conflict And I think all international and media organisations have done this.
“There should be formal protests about this lack of access because its implications and its actual effects are so far-reaching.
“It interferes and obstructs all the normal process of news gathering and reporting, even in a warzone. The fact that it’s continued for so long is unprecedented.”
Last December, reports alleged that Husain had pushed for tougher scrutiny of Israel and for more voices to be heard from Gaza before her BBC departure announcement.
“She feels we don’t sufficiently report on the deaths of civilians, and we frame too much from the Israeli perspective,” a senior source from the Today programme told The Times.
“She has pushed for more voices from within Gaza, and to use [Gaza correspondent] Rushdi Abualouf on air more regularly. She has also taken a lot of [external] heat.”
Speaking to Vogue, Husain, a Muslim woman, said she had felt racism ramping up.
“This year I think I have felt racism in a way that I probably haven’t at any point in my career before and that’s in this country,” she said. “That has been hard – and that has given me pause.”
Asked if she will talk publicly about what happened, she said: “I don’t know when, or if, I will be ready to talk about that in detail publicly, partly because it’s painful and partly because it shook me, you know, to the core, in quite a deep way.”
The BBC has been asked for comment.
