The debate over of the BBC’s refusal to air the DEC Gaza aid appeal has largely overlooked an important document. In 2006 a BBC investigation into the impartiality of its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict found that there was a “disparity” in favour of Israel because the Corporation failed to make clear that the Palestinians live under Israeli occupation.
Led by a panel of establishment figures chaired by Sir Quentin Thomas, it took evidence from all sides, including Greg Philo’s detailed research “Bad News from Israel” and a quantitative study by the Communications Research Centre at Loughborough University.
It also saw the top secret Balen Report – an unpublished internal report prepared for BBC management by its senior editorial adviser on the Middle East, Malcolm Balen, in 2003 – about which there has recently been speculation that it showed anti-Israel bias at the BBC.
Entitled “Report of the independent panel for the BBC governors on impartiality of BBC coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict“, the review was widely seen as confirmation that the BBC is biased towards Israel. The headline in the Times, for example, on the day after the report was published, read: “BBC news ‘favours Israel’ at expense of Palestinian view“.
The report itself concluded: “One important feature of [the BBC's problems telling a complicated story] is the failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, reflecting the fact that one side is in control and the other lives under occupation. Although this asymmetry does not necessarily bear on the relative merits of the two sides, it is so marked and important that coverage should succeed in this if in nothing else.”
It continued: “We recommend the BBC should make purposive, and not merely reactive, efforts to explain the complexities of the conflict in the round, including the marked disparity between the positions of the two sides, and to overcome the high level of incomprehension among the audience.”
Page 22 of the report states:
“Among the findings from the quantitative content analysis which the researchers judge to be most important for the Panel are these: …
that a disparity (in favour of Israelis) [brackets in original, ed.] existed in BBC coverage taken as a whole in the amount of talk time given to non-party political Israelis and Palestinians;
that a disparity (in favour of Israelis) existed in BBC coverage taken as a whole in the amount of talk time given to Israelis and Palestinians;
that there was a broad parity in BBC coverage taken as a whole in terms of the appearance of Israeli and Palestinian party political actors;
that a disparity (in favour of Israelis) existed in BBC coverage taken as a whole in terms of the appearance of non-party political Israeli and Palestinian actors;
that a disparity (in favour of Israelis) existed in BBC coverage taken as a whole in terms of the appearance of Israeli and Palestinian actors”.
