Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee, recently stood down and sent an internal memo setting out his concerns about the corporation’s reporting.
After the Prescott memo was leaked this month, its revelations prompted the resignations of two senior BBC executives. US President Donald Trump called them “very dishonest people” and threatened a massive lawsuit.
A long section of the dossier concerns the BBC’s reporting of the Gaza war, with Prescott setting out extensive evidence of what he regards as the corporation’s bias against Israel. He concludes: “It seems very hard for any pro-Palestinian observers to make a compelling case the BBC has a pro-Israel bias.”
This finding has been welcomed by some supporters of Israel as evidence that the BBC is a pro-Hamas organisation. The Israeli foreign ministry said the resignation of director general Tim Davie “underscores the deep-seated bias that has long characterised the BBC’s coverage of Israel”.
The Israeli embassy in London said it has for years “warned about the BBC’s consistent failures to uphold the standards of accuracy, impartiality, and integrity expected from a public broadcaster”.
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Middle East Eye has examined the long section of the memo on Israel and Gaza, and discovered a multitude of errors of fact and interpretation, with many surprising omissions.
We sent a letter to Prescott, setting out what we believe to be damning evidence that his dossier was riddled with mistakes and distortions, and giving him an opportunity to reply – but he has declined to go on the record with a response. In lieu of that, we are publishing what we sent here, as an open letter (with some minor edits and redactions).
Covering Palestinians
Dear Michael,
We are preparing an article on your memo to the BBC board members. We have worked on an analysis of your claims, in particular those concerning the BBC’s coverage of Gaza.
We plan to say that there are several problems with your memo. And we want to put them to you first, so that you have time to respond.
You set out a number of areas where you claim that BBC English coverage has fallen down from the highest standards when it comes to its reporting of Israel. However, as a former independent adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee, why did you not also draw attention to many coherent criticisms that the BBC has been biased against Palestinians?
The only plausible reason they have been excluded is because they are critics of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians
For example, in November 2024, the BBC presented footage of Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters attacking Dutch people as if it showed attacks by Dutch racists against Jews. The BBC belatedly acknowledged that its use of the footage “could have given” a misleading impression.
Why didn’t you highlight this example of reporting, which presented pro-Palestinians as aggressors and Israeli football thugs as victims? It was, after all, at least as egregious as the Panorama/Trump editing debacle.
Why didn’t you express concern about the presence of Robbie Gibb, for several years the sole owner of the Jewish Chronicle, on the editorial guidelines and standards committee of the BBC? This point is especially relevant, given there was no remotely comparable pro-Palestinian figure on the committee.
You did not express concern that Avi Shlaim – a Jewish Israeli historian, emeritus fellow of St Antony’s College, emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, and world authority on the Israel-Palestine conflict – has never been invited to speak on a mainstream BBC programme.
The same applies to Ilan Pappe, a Jewish-Israeli historian and professor at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter. Similarly, genocide scholar Martin Shaw says that he is invited to comment by news organisations around the globe – but not the BBC.
In your survey, why do you not give consideration to these examples of misreporting by omission? Do you agree with us that the only plausible reason they have been excluded is because they are critics of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians?
Loaded language
Assessing the first year of the BBC’s coverage of the Gaza war, the Centre for Media Monitoring found: “When measured in proportion to the 34:1 Gazan-Israeli death toll, the BBC gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage across articles – and 19 times more across TV/radio – than Palestinian deaths” (see page 155 of this report). Why did you not mention this?
The BBC barely reported on the Dahiya Doctrine, which authorises the use of disproportionate force and attacks on civilian infrastructure by the Israeli army, or on the Hannibal Directive, which authorises the army to kill Israelis who are being taken hostage by enemy forces – and which was implemented on 7 October 2023.
The occupation only rarely gets mentioned, even though it is a vital factor in comprehending the context of Israel’s campaign of destruction in Gaza. Why did you not mention these examples of the BBC’s bias against the Palestinian side?
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The BBC (again according to the Centre for Media Monitoring) used emotive terms 3.6 times more for Israeli victims, applied “massacre” almost 18 times more frequently to Israeli casualties, and used “murder” 220 times for Israelis, as opposed to just once for Palestinians.
The BBC was more than twice as likely to interview an Israeli than a Palestinian. The killings of just six percent of Palestinian journalists were reported on the BBC English news service. In telling contrast, 42 percent of journalists killed in Ukraine were reported. Why did you not address these examples of pro-Israel bias?
It has been widely noted that the BBC routinely uses passive language that obscures Israeli responsibility (for example, “air strike on Gaza school kills at least 15 people”). It has also been widely noted that Israeli deaths are reported in more emotive terms, with victims far more likely to be humanised by details about names, family background, etc. Why did you ignore this element of clear and persistent bias in BBC reporting?
As stated by BBC presenter and veteran journalist David Aaronovitch, when it comes to your attack on the BBC Arabic service, your “most detailed evidence concerns questions that had already been dealt with long before” you sent your memo. What is your response to this elementary point?
Aaronovitch also notes that you fail to mention that “BBC reporting has not been made any easier by the barring by the Israeli authorities of all journalistic access to Gaza”. Why don’t you mention this?
Mass graves
We now turn to a number of factual errors in the examples that you provide of supposed anti-Israel bias by the BBC’s English service.
With regards to the 2024 discovery of mass graves at al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals, you stated: “It seems that the most likely explanation was the graves at both hospitals were dug by Palestinians and the people buried there had died or been killed prior to the arrival of Israel ground forces.”
Yet Israeli ground forces were responsible for enforcing the siege of Nasser Hospital – through tanks and snipers – and it was during and as a result of this siege that the deaths occurred of the individuals who were buried in mass graves outside the facility. Israeli ground forces were surrounding the hospital, and it was because of their actions (cutting off electricity and medical supplies, and shooting/shelling) that people ended up being buried in the mass graves.
This was confirmed by Dr Atef al-Hout, the head of Nasser Hospital: “During the weeks of Israeli siege and attacks on the hospital, we were forced to bury around 250 bodies, mainly patients who died from lack of medical treatment, or people killed by Israeli fire. However, the Israeli army opened the graves and abducted 80 bodies which they claimed they needed to check for hostages, and later returned the bodies through the Rafah crossing to Najjar Hospital.” Why didn’t you refer to this testimony?
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) documented how Israeli ground forces were murdering people in and around Nasser Hospital during the siege; entries from an MSF logbook inside the hospital were compiled by MSF doctors and “corroborated by other sources”. Thus, when you say that “the most likely explanation” was that “the people buried there had died or been killed prior to the arrival of Israel ground forces”, this is not true in the case of Nasser Hospital. Why did you ignore this evidence from MSF?
With regards to your claim that the mass graves outside Nasser Hospital had most likely been “dug by Palestinians”, it is true that at least some of the bodies were buried by Palestinians. But consider this testimony from Jewish American surgeon Mark Perlmutter – who volunteered in Gaza – reporting that Israeli soldiers buried children alive in a mass grave in the compound of Nasser Hospital: “We had interviewed people behind the medical complex, the Nasser medical complex. There’s a large field that was a grassed-in area with palm trees, and like many hospitals have, it’s a courtyard for people to relax in. It was turned into a mass grave by the Israelis,” he said.
“People who witnessed people being buried in these graves told us a story, which we’re pursuing with the [International Court of Justice] now, of him witnessing two children being pushed into the mass grave by Israeli soldiers with a bulldozer, and then their cries being muffled by the dirt that was poured upon them while they were being buried alive. And then when the bodies were excavated, the red and green shirts of these kids whose hands were tied behind their backs were found.”
Why did you ignore this testimony from Perlmutter?
Evidence ignored
Now let’s look at al-Shifa Hospital. Again, you claim: “It seems that the most likely explanation was the graves at both hospitals were dug by Palestinians and the people buried there had died or been killed prior to the arrival of Israel ground forces.”
Yet Forensic Architecture investigated what happened at al-Shifa Hospital, and found evidence that the Israeli army buried people in mass graves using bulldozers. It cited visual evidence suggesting that at least two mass graves outside al-Shifa Hospital were dug by Israeli forces. Why do you completely ignore this Forensic Architecture investigation?
Why do you ignore this report by Human Rights Watch, which details evidence of Israeli war crimes at both al-Shifa Hospital and Nasser Hospital?
Why do you ignore this OHCHR report, while not citing any of the supposed ‘evidence’ that you claim ‘Israel had uncovered of Hamas operating’ in Nasser Hospital?
You write that the BBC “did not cover the evidence Israel had uncovered of Hamas operating there”, referring to Nasser Hospital. As pointed out by Nimer Sultany, a reader in law at Soas University: “The obvious problem with repeating Israeli ‘evidence’ is that it is not credible.”
Sultany points out that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) responded to Israel’s allegations that Palestinian armed groups had been operating from Nasser Hospital by noting that “insufficient information has so far been made publicly available to substantiate these allegations, which have remained vague and broad, and in some cases appear contradicted by publicly available information”.
OHCHR stated this in December 2024, while the BBC article that you criticise for allegedly ignoring “the evidence Israel had uncovered of Hamas operating” in Nasser Hospital was from March 2024. Thus, even by the year’s end, no “evidence” had surfaced of Hamas operating in Nasser Hospital. Why do you ignore this OHCHR report, while not citing any of the supposed “evidence” that you claim “Israel had uncovered of Hamas operating” in Nasser Hospital?
Medical expertise
You write: “As recently as last month (August 2025), the BBC had to correct a headline which stated: ‘Malnutritioned Gaza woman flown to Italy dies in hospital’. It was replaced with ‘Gaza woman flown to Italy dies in hospital’ after it became clear she had serious preexisting conditions. The correction was only made two days later after the questionable version had been shared around the world.” Where is your evidence that this Palestinian woman “had serious preexisting conditions”?
It is certainly true that Cogat – Israel’s administrative body responsible for the occupied territories – claimed that Marah Abu Zuhri had been suffering from leukaemia. But the only “evidence” that has been presented that she had leukaemia is a picture of a report from Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, which says: “Blood film showed many promyelocytes in keeping with acute promyelocytic leukemia.”
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But this report from Nasser Hospital does not say definitively that she had leukaemia – just that the indications from the blood sample were consistent with such a diagnosis. Palestinian journalist Muhammad Shehada has debunked the claim that she had leukaemia. He posted a screenshot from an article published in the Italian newspaper La Nazione, which quotes the Italian doctor who tended to Abu Zuhri explicitly saying that she did not have leukaemia, and that she was severely malnourished.
The doctor quoted was Professor Sara Galimberti, director of the haematology unit of the Pisa University Hospital. This is what Galimberti told La Nazione: “She arrived with the hypothesis of a very serious acute leukaemia – which, however, after the appropriate investigations, we have shown she did not have.”
This is consistent with the fact that Nasser Hospital never said definitively that she had leukaemia; it was just a “hypothesis”, as Galimberti pointed out. She continued: “The patient was completely bedridden. This is not a situation in which she had been for a few days, but for a long time. She had several altered coagulation parameters, but also very low proteins, and for this reason we immediately consulted with the nutritionist and started an ad hoc high-calorie nutrition.”
The La Nazione article explicitly says that Abu Zuhri was “in already desperate condition due to severe malnutrition” when she arrived in Pisa, and highlights the Israeli blockade of Gaza in causing this malnutrition. Why did you ignore the testimony from the director of the haematology unit of the Pisa University Hospital?
Yours sincerely,
Peter Oborne and Irfan Chowdhury
Irfan Chowdhury is a PhD student at the University of Brighton; he contributed much of the research to this letter.
The views expressed in this article belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
