The British BBC has been accused of a “deeply disturbing” pattern of bias against Israel since the start of the Hamas war

A new report accuses Britain's leading public broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation, of a “deeply disturbing” pattern of bias against the State of Israel. Since the Hamas attacks on October 7, there have been more than 1,500 violations of the broadcaster's editorial guidelines.

The report, issued by a team of lawyers and data scientists led by attorney Trevor Asserson, accuses the BBC of repeatedly linking Israel with terms such as “genocide,” “violation of international law” and “war crimes,” while virtually ignoring the crimes committed by Hamas terrorists and their collaborators, London's Daily Telegraph reports. Asserson lives in Jerusalem and is the founder of BBCWatch, which analyzes the broadcaster's coverage of the Middle East.

“The findings reveal a deeply disturbing pattern of bias and numerous breaches by the BBC of its own editorial policies on impartiality, fairness and truth-telling,” the report said.

The researchers, a team of 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists, used artificial intelligence to sift through around nine million words of BBC output. They concluded that Israel is 14 times more likely to be associated with genocide than Hamas, and that senior journalists such as international editor Jeremy Bowen and international correspondent Lyse Doucet downplay or excuse the acts of terror committed by Hamas.

Following the report's publication, leading voices in London, as well as Jewish groups in the UK such as the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the National Jewish Assembly, reiterated previous calls for an independent investigation into the BBC's coverage of the conflict in Israel. Former Labour minister Lord Austin accused the broadcaster of “overbearing arrogance” for ignoring the criticism, and a former senior executive at the broadcaster, Danny Cohen, said the broadcaster now faced an “institutional crisis”.