BBC Failed to Name Israel As Perpetrator in Half of Civilian Casualty Reports, Data Shows

Coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza by major UK publications has been found to consistently minimise Israeli violence and dehumanise Palestinians in a new study, with the BBC failing to name Israel as the perpetrator in half of analysed reports on civilian deaths in Gaza. 

The new data from a linguistic analysis by UK media bias comparison app NewsCord shows the BBC, Sky News and the Guardian making pro-Israel editorial choices in their coverage of the genocide Gaza since 2023, including using obscuring language, the passive voice and negative qualifiers such as “Hamas-run health ministry”. 

This is despite claims from Sky and BBC News that their reporting is impartial, and the Guardian’s claim to uphold independent and values-driven journalism. The taxpayer-funded BBC is constitutionally bound by the Royal Charter, and both Sky and the BBC are regulated by Ofcom. 

NewsCord analysed 11,295 excerpts from 686 digital articles from the Guardian, Sky News, BBC News and Al Jazeera to quantify bias in reporting on Israel’s genocide in Gaza since October 2023. 

The data report, released on 23 April, found that when reporting on Palestinian casualties, the BBC used the passive voice –  “15 killed as Israel attacks camp” rather than “Israel killed 15 people” – in nearly four out of five cases (77%), removing agency and responsibility from Israel. Sky News used the passive voice for reporting Palestinian casualties in 71% of cases, the Guardian in 67% and Al Jazeera in 53%.

The data report also found that BBC News failed to name Israel as the perpetrator in Israeli attacks where civilians were killed in Gaza in 50% of all analysed cases, the Guardian in 45% of cases and Sky News in 46% of cases – compared to in 11% of cases for Al Jazeera. 

Responding to Newscord’s findings, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told Novara Media that the British media has “manufactured consent for genocide”. 

Articles were only included for analysis in instances where each of the four outlets published at least one story reporting on the same event, to ensure side-by-side comparisons and evaluation on consistent metrics. 

The BBC was found to label Gaza’s health ministry “Hamas-affiliated” in 60% of death toll citations, compared to in 36% of cases for Sky News. The BBC also failed to note that the UN finds the Gaza’s health ministry’s figures credible – adding this context in just 0.6% of cases. 

‘Empathy gap.’

NewCord’s analysis also examined how Israeli and Palestinian perspectives are included in coverage, and found that Sky News gave Israeli perspectives nearly double the space of Palestinian ones (28% vs 15%). Out of the four publications analysed in the dataset, only Al Jazeera was found to give more space to Palestinian voices.

In the coverage of hostages and prisoners, the data report found an “empathy gap” in reporting, with Israeli hostages typically being named, their families interviewed and their suffering foregrounded. 

Of the nearly 10,000 Palestinians held in Israeli jails, over 3,300 are ‘administrative detainees’ (imprisoned without charge) and more than 450 are children. However, Palestinians were found to receive far less humanising coverage. 

BBC News’ coverage was found to humanise Israeli hostages at nearly double the rate of Palestinians – 58% of Israeli hostages were humanised vs 29% of Palestinians – and for the Guardian and Sky News, the empathy gap was even more stark. 79% of Israelis were humanised vs 38% of Palestinians in Guardian coverage, and 65% vs 31% in Sky coverage. 

NewsCord’s founder Nima Akram said: “The data in this report is not opinion, it’s the result of a systematic classification of thousands of article excerpts covering the same events, in an attempt to measure overall bias in three years of reporting on this long, bloody genocide. 

“We built NewsCord to compare how different outlets cover the same story, and this investigation is the clearest demonstration yet of why that matters.”

Corbyn, the parliamentary leader of Your Party, told Novara Media: “With few exceptions, much of the British media has provided cover for Israeli crimes. They have failed to treat Palestinian and Israeli lives with equal worth. They have failed to hold the government to account for its own shameful participation.”

The dataset shows significant evidence of ‘both-sidesing’, with half of Sky’s articles framing Israeli attacks as a “two-sided conflict”, and referencing October 7 when reporting Israeli strikes on Gaza in 50% of cases. 

In its analysis of how blocks to and breaches of ceasefires in Gaza are framed, NewsCord found that both the BBC and Sky framed Hamas an obstacle to more than Israel as an obstacle, and – perhaps most incredibly – reported on Hamas breaching ceasefire agreements more than Israel. 

Israel has breached the October 2025 ceasefire thousands of times in the past six months, killing at least 736 Palestinians.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) called the new dataset an “important report” that “adds to the overwhelming body of evidence that clearly shows the systemic and long-term anti-Palestinian bias across the mainstream media”.

PSC’s deputy director Peter Leary told Novara Media: “We know that this bias serves to cover up and legitimise Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people including genocide. It is vital that we continue to hold the media to account, as one of the principal pillars propping up Britain’s complicity in Israel’s atrocities.”

‘Normalising’ war crimes. 

NewsCord also analysed how the four media outlets evaluate the actions of the IDF in Gaza – for which international law provides clear frameworks – from war crimes to genocide. It found that Sky News mentioned “genocide” just 12 times across the entire dataset, the BBC 15 times, and the Guardian 21 times. In comparison, Al Jazeera mentioned genocide 58 times. 

The report notes: “The absence of legal language in coverage can normalise actions that the international legal community has flagged as potentially criminal.”

The BBC only reported one genocidal statement from an Israeli minister, despite an estimated 500 such statements being made by Israeli politicians, army personnel, journalists and other influential personalities. 

In January 2025, BBC News reported Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich speaking of creating “a situation where Gaza’s population will be reduced to half its current size in two years”. The quote was included in the final paragraphs of a long report headlined: “‘A long, long road ahead’: Gaza rebuilds from zero”. There is no indication from the headline of who has destroyed Gaza, requiring it to be rebuilt “from zero”. 

A failure to report genocidal language – or identify it as such – allows it to go unchallenged in the public sphere. Some statements that amount to incitement to genocide since October 2023 include Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant saying: “We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly”, Smotrich saying: “It might be justified and moral to starve two million people”, and Israeli president Isaac Herzog’s statement that “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible”. 

Since October 2023, Israel has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians in Gaza – a figure that is likely to be a severe undercount – including at least 21,000 children. In the October 7 attacks, Hamas fighters reportedly killed 1,200 people, of whom 810 were civilians, and 37 children. 

Following the publication of its media analysis on Gaza coverage, NewsCord is formally calling on the BBC, Sky News and the Guardian to publicly review their coverage against the evidence, correct documented imbalances in framing, attribution and proportionality, and disclose and revise editorial practices, including the BBC’s use of “Hamas-run health ministry”. NewsCord also calls for a commitment to ongoing self-auditing using objective metrics, which – in the BBC’s case – it says should be published regularly as the broadcaster is publicly-funded. 

NewsCord, part of the Tech For Palestine non-profit advocacy coalition, uses a large-scale analysis platform, combining AI with human verification and quantifiable metrics to aggregate, compare and analyse framing, language, tone and voicing, among other editorial choices. Its news comparison and aggregator platform is available as a mobile app, website and browser plugin. 

This isn’t the first time the BBC has come under fire for bias in its coverage of the genocide in Gaza. In June 2025, analysis of more than 35,000 pieces of BBC content by the Centre for Media Monitoring found the broadcaster’s coverage to be systematically biased against Palestinians and failed to reach standards of impartiality. 

Sky News noted that the data analysis did not include its video reporting or original journalism from across the region. The Guardian declined to comment. The BBC was approached for comment.