The BBC continues to flood its airwaves with Israeli spokespeople when reporting on the assault on Gaza, and it allows those spokespeople to trot out Israeli propaganda lines which are complete falsehoods. These propaganda lines go unchallenged by BBC interviewers and, the majority of the time, the BBC does not invite a Palestinian spokesperson onto the programme to provide an alternative viewpoint. As a result, Israel’s propaganda is given a prominence on the BBC, whose news programmes reach 81% of the UK every week.
Please don’t be silent. Make your voice heard.
Please make an official complaint to the BBC every time you watch or listen to a BBC tv/radio broadcast which:
- Features an Israel spokesperson and no Palestinian
- Allows the Israeli spokesperson to say that Israel left Gaza in 2005 (Israel controls Gaza’s air, sea and land borders and is recognised as the occupying power by the UN), and that Gaza is free, without challenging that lie.
How to make a complaint:
- Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online/ and click on ‘make a complaint’
- Fill out the form. You’ll need to know the name of the programme you watched or listened to, and the date and approximate time it was on.
- Always ask for a reply
- After you’ve submitted your complaint, you’ll receive an acknowledgement email from the BBC. This email contains the text of your complaint
- After a few days, the BBC Complaints Department will email you a reply to your complaint. This could take up to 10 days, sometimes longer
What to do next:
- The reply you receive will probably be a stock response, claiming the BBC is accurate and impartial in its reporting
- Please go back to the web form at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online/ and make a second complaint. You’ll be asked if you’ve contacted the BBC before over this complaint. Choose the ‘yes’ option. When asked why you’re contacting the BBC again, choose the option which says that you’re dissatisfied with the answer you received. You’ll be asked to enter the CAS number given in the original email from BBC Complaints. When you get to the box where you fill in the text of your complaint, say that the points you made in your first complaint weren’t addressed and repeat them. Ask how to take your complaint further.
- You’ll receive a second email from BBC Complaints advising you to take your complaint to the Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU), and providing you with an email address.
- Email the ECU. Say that you’re writing to them because your points weren’t addressed by BBC Complaints and you’d like the ECU to look at them. Repeat your points in the email.
- It’s really important that you get your complaint to the ECU. It’s only at this stage that the BBC will look at your complaint properly and be forced to address the specific points that you’ve made. The ECU will treat your complaint as an individual complaint. Please get your complaints to this stage and force the BBC to think about the answer it gives you, rather than fobbing you off with a stock response at Stage 1 that lets it off the hook.
More information and resources on challenging BBC bias over Palestine are available here: https://palestinecampaign.org/campaign/media-complaints/