(LifeSiteNews) — It is probably safe to assume that most people do not know, as British journalist Owen Jones reports, “the BBC website is the most-visited news site on the internet. In May alone, it had 1.1 billion visits.”
The BBC therefore has massive global influence on what people believe about what is happening in the world. Many other news services in turn quote the BBC as an allegedly reliable, primary source of information. However, according to Jones and some angry BBC staff, it is more of a massive propaganda enterprise – especially on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians.
Worse still, is that the BBC, and very likely many other hugely influential legacy news companies, are being coopted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to serve what he has said is Israel’s ambition is to “police the planet” through the development of Artificial Intelligence systems.
Some of the Israeli plans for world information domination through AI are truly alarming and science fiction sounding in scope. This should be a cause for deep concern by the world’s public.
Ultimately, the only way to learn confidently the truth about Israel and its expansionist plans and wars is to listen to, watch and read mostly alternative internet media such as LifeSiteNews, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Redacted News, Candace Owens and many other alternative sources that are not under Zionist influence.
An investigation into coverage of Israel’s wars by the BBC has found significant evidence of systemic bias in favor of the Zionist state.
In a report published this week by DropSite News, Guardian journalist Owen Jones describes the “BBC Civil War over Gaza,” documenting the accounts of “13 current and former BBC journalists,” to conclude that “BBC coverage has been more credulous about Israeli claims than… the Israeli media, while devaluing Palestinian life, ignoring atrocities, and creating a false equivalence in an entirely unbalanced conflict.”
“The imbalance is structural, and has been enforced by the top brass for many years,” Jones says, citing evidence from as early as 2009 to illustrate the whistleblowers’ claims of “a wider BBC culture of “systematic Israeli propaganda.”
Jones’ investigation also cites a 150 page report by the U.K.’s Centre for Media Monitoring. Published in March 2024, it cited cases of coverage favoring Israeli perspectives to show the BBC’s position “…has often been to push the Israeli line whilst casting doubt on Pro-Palestinian voices.”
As Jones records, “The BBC journalists said they presented the document to Richard Burgess, the BBC‘s director of news content who oversees content across BBC platforms.”
His response? He did not “recognize the bias.”
The BBC routinely responds to claims of bias in its coverage with appeals to its mission to remain impartial. Responding to Jones’ report, which it dismissed, a BBC source said “The BBC remains the world’s most trusted international news source.”
Yet as Jones writes, the BBC’s routine defense has been shown to be insufficient by Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News.
“The BBC’s defenders point to the fact that the organization is criticized from ‘both sides.’ But even Turness dismissed this as a defense in a blog post titled ‘How the BBC is covering Israel-Gaza,’ published on October 25, 2023.”
Jones quotes the BBC News chief as saying, “We cannot afford to simply say that if both sides are criticizing us, we’re getting things right.”
“That isn’t good enough for the BBC or for our audiences. At the BBC we hold ourselves to a higher standard and rightly challenge ourselves to listen to our critics and consider what changes to make where we think that criticism is fair.”
Yet one BBC official charged with maintaining impartiality is the former owner of Britain’s pro-Israel Jewish Chronicle. Robbie Gibb, described by fellow Jewish journalist Emily Maitlis “as the arbiter of BBC impartiality,” continues to shape BBC policy on its Israel coverage.
“Gibb’s deep involvement with the Jewish Chronicle continued after he took up his BBC role,” Jones reports, noting how the Chronicle’s coverage “read more like a propaganda sheet for Benjamin Netanyahu.”
According to a former employee at the paper, Gibb regularly appeared in the office “to check up on what stories were topping the news list and offering a view.”
The Jewish Chronicle, according to Jones, is “focused on zealously supporting Israel’s onslaught since October 2023.”
The BBC’s Middle East editor, Raffi Berg, boasted about the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu displays one of his books.
😲 First time I’ve been on a prime minister’s bookshelf! I know I’ve got one of 🇮🇱 #Israel PM @netanyahu‘s books on mine – but wow! 📖 #RedSeaSpies #Mossad @IsraeliPM @LikudUK @IsraelinUK @IsraelinNewYork @KasaBHarbor @jonnygouldpod @iconbooks https://t.co/Bg7LWAAssD pic.twitter.com/NlcggJGgwx
— Raffi Berg (@raffiberg) August 23, 2020
Berg, who urged colleagues to downplay Israel’s 2015 siege of Gaza in their BBC coverage, now supervises reporting on Israel and its wars and victims. He responded to initial inquiries leading to Jones’ report with threats of legal action.
As DropSite News said in its introduction, “When Jones reached out to Berg for comment, Berg at first hired the famous defamation lawyer Mark Lewis, who is also former Director of UK Lawyers for Israel.”
Jones records “one former BBC journalist” saying of Berg: “This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel.”
In an indication of the costs inflicted on anyone wishing to report the truth about Israel, its actions, and its tremendous influence in putatively “impartial” media, DropSite asks whether readers can “help pay for Jones’s $24,000 in initial legal bills in vetting the story.”
Israel kills journalists in Gaza, censors Western media reporting on Israel, and conducts a worldwide operation to guarantee favorable coverage of its actions following a strategy known as “Hasbara.” The technique also includes attacking pro-Israel outlets such as the BBC for “anti-Israel bias,” which pressures outlets to adjust coverage in favor of Israel.
READ: How Israel uses the ‘hasbara’ technique to deceive Americans into supporting their wars
Netanyahu has said himself that Israel’s ambition is to “police the planet” through the development of Artificial Intelligence systems.
Why is Netanyahu so interested in AI? As LifeSiteNews reported in June, AI development promises domination of online discussion – and targets Elon Musk’s “free speech” platform X to do so.
Israeli generated AI is driving a new generation of automated fake accounts on X. Research reported in Al-Jazeera on May 24 found a worrying explanation for the flood of pro-Israel comments accompanying criticism of Israel on X.
“Almost every tweet [post] is essentially bombarded and swarmed by many accounts, all of whom follow very similar patterns, all of whom seem almost human,” said Lebanese researchers Ralph Baydoun and Michel Semaan, from communications consulting firm InflueAnswers.
The report warns, “But they are not human. They are bots.”
READ: Elon Musk’s X stops using firm with ties to Israeli intelligence to store user information
LifeSiteNews also reported in May on the climate of fear revealed by a BBC whistleblower, who claimed BBC staff were “afraid to report the facts” about Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Why does Israel and its agencies target supposedly impartial broadcasters and social media platforms? As the leader of the Israeli opposition Yair Lapid explained in October 2023, “If the international media is objective, it serves Hamas.”
Speaking weeks after the October 7 attacks – of which Benjamin Netanyahu is said to have been warned of at least a year in advance – Lapid added, “If it shows both sides, it serves Hamas.”
Jones’ extensive report once again highlights the extraordinary and long-established power of Zionists to shape media narratives to flatter their aims, whilst diminishing reports of the horror of the means used to realize them. Israel’s war in Gaza has been described by Col. Douglas Macgregor as a “war of extermination” against the non-Jewish population.
His report includes shocking data, such as the fact that as Palestinian deaths mounted to over 45,000, BBC coverage of them declined. Others, including the renowned medical journal the Lancet and UN and international social justice investigators, estimate the true death figure to be far higher, likely surpassing 200,000 by now.
Though Jones displays pronouns in his bio, is an open socialist and homosexualist, and has been denounced by his comrades on the left as an unprincipled careerist, his report is an outstanding account of how Zionist power has presented misinformation in place of the horror of the actions of the State of Israel.