Exclusive: The Director-General of the BBC has held “listening meetings” with staff as the BBC seeks to address internal unrest over perceived bias in its coverage of the war between Israel and Gaza.
Tim Davie and other senior managers have sat down with staff in recent weeks, giving them space to voice their concerns about the company’s production since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, several BBC insiders told the BBC.
Deadline can reveal that one such meeting took place on 12 January, when around two dozen staff, including senior presenters, challenged Davie with claims that the BBC was biased against Palestinians.
Similar meetings have been held with workers who feel that what the BBC was offering was not in Israel’s interests. The Daily Telegraph I reported last week that at least 22 Jewish staff had made formal complaints about the anti-Semitism and social media activity of presenter Gary Lineker, who recently reposted (and later deleted) a call to ban Israel from sporting events.
People familiar with the January 12 discussion said staff raised a range of concerns, including the use of “dehumanizing” language to describe those killed in Gaza and the BBC not being aware of stories published by other networks, including Channel 4 News. And the island. At least one employee said they were considering leaving the BBC because of their experiences in recent months, according to the sources.
An insider said: “Some people have been talking about the crisis they are facing in their careers because they never knew the BBC was skewed in one direction to this extent.”
Tim Davie reveals a security threat
Davey, who was flanked by BBC chief of staff Uzair Kadeer, largely kept his counsel during the meeting, one of the people said. Another said they were surprised by Davy’s candor.
Davie revealed to the group that he needed security after posters appeared around London personally attacking the Director-General over the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict. Following safety advice, Davey temporarily had to take a private car to work when he normally commutes by subway.
Separately, a source said that Davy admitted that the pro-Israel lobby was more organized than Palestinian supporters in his dealings with the BBC.
Davie is also said to have cited parity in audience complaints received by the BBC about its reporting on the conflict. Deadline understands that the BBC has received around 8,000 complaints since October 7, with concern split roughly 50-50 between those who claim its reporting is biased against Israel and those who say it has been unfavorable to Palestinians.
The BBC admitted making errors in its production. In October, the BBC apologized after BBC News described people participating in pro-Palestine rallies as supporting Hamas. Earlier this month, the BBC expressed its regret for publishing unconfirmed claims by Hamas about the Israeli army carrying out “summary executions” of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
A Palestinian man inspects the wreckage of a car after the Israeli bombing of Rafah in Gaza.
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The BBC’s coverage of the Middle East crisis has come under significant political scrutiny, with British Culture Secretary Lucy Fraser stepping in last week to question the broadcaster’s impartiality after it speculated that Israel had bombed a hospital in Gaza City. She said this was an example of the public’s loss of confidence in the BBC’s impartiality.
Jewish industry figures, including former BBC Television chief Danny Cohen, have strongly criticized the company. Cohen wrote in Telegraph Last week, a pattern of errors was evidence of “institutional bias” and, in some cases, “anti-Jewish racism.”
Employees who accuse the BBC of bias against Palestinians say that the corporation shows its tendencies in more subtle ways. Colleagues shared a recent analysis of 4,600 BBC news stories and live blogs. The study, conceived by Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist Mona Chalabi, concluded that the BBC showed “a disproportionate bias towards Israeli deaths rather than Palestinian deaths”. It also claimed that Palestinians were “dehumanized” as corpses, while Israelis were documented as fathers, mothers, daughters or sons.
There is also growing concern about a potential conflict of interest for Robbie Gibb, a BBC board member who also owns Jewish history, a newspaper whose editor-in-chief accused the broadcaster of “almost pathological” distrust of Israel. Some have wondered whether there would be more controversy if a BBC board member had links to an Islamist newspaper that similarly attacked the corporation.
One person who attended the January 12 meeting had a more philosophical view, saying they did not see a divide between staff who had different opinions about BBC production. “I’ve made mistakes and things can be done better, but I think most of the time I’m surrounded by people who are genuinely trying to do as good a job as possible,” an insider said.
The BBC declined to comment on specific discussions with staff. A company spokesman said senior managers “meet with a wide range of employees and groups on a wide range of issues.”