Report: British media’s pro-Israel bias increases amid Gaza war

According to a study by the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), pro-Israel bias has increased in British media coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.

The study analyzed over half a million British news stories published between November 2023 and June 2024. It found that Israel’s perceived rights were mentioned seven times more often than those of the Palestinians.

The organization released a report in March examining key issues in reporting on the war in Gaza, including contextualization and framing. The report covered one month, from October 7 to November 7.

The CfMM updated some of its results over the following seven months using the same methodology.

Important findings that The new Arab A study conducted by the CfMM found that in the first month, most television channels “overwhelmingly” promoted “Israel’s right” to defend itself, overshadowing Palestinian rights by a ratio of 5:1.

Over the next seven months, the number of mentions of Israel’s “right to self-defense” increased by a ratio of 7:1, and in online sources the ratio increased from 6:1 to 7:1.

The organization also found that Israeli perspectives were mentioned nearly three times as often as Palestinian ones and that they were almost twice as present in online news.

The CfMM examined over 450,000 broadcast clips from 13 news channels, including BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Sky News, Al Jazeera English, UK NewsAnd TalkTV.

News channels used “Israel’s right” 2,288 times, often followed by “to defend itself,” compared to 324 mentions of Palestinian rights.

CfMM also examined 28 news websites, including Daily Mail, The sun, The Independent, The Guardian, The Times and that BBC.

In the 70,000 news articles analyzed, Palestinian rights were mentioned 299 times, compared to 2,130 mentions of Israeli rights.

An analysis of The new Arab in March found similar results: in 645 cases, emotionally charged words were used to describe Israeli victims of Hamas violence, but in 57 cases they described Palestinian victims of Israeli violence.