Ten journalists who have covered the war on Gaza for two of the world\u2019s leading news networks, CNN and the BBC, have revealed the inner workings of those outlets\u2019 newsrooms from October 7 onward, alleging pro-Israel bias in coverage, systematic double standards and frequent violations of journalistic principles. In several cases, they accused senior newsroom figures of failing to hold Israeli officials to account and of interfering in reporting to downplay Israeli atrocities. In one instance at CNN, false Israeli propaganda was put on air despite advance warnings from staff members. The journalists spoke to Al Jazeera\u2019s The Listening Post, a weekly programme dissecting the world\u2019s media, for its documentary Failing Gaza: Behind the Lens of Western Media. Adam, a journalist at CNN, said before October 7, he \u201chand on heart\u201d trusted the network\u2019s journalistic practices. \u201cBut after October 7, the ease with which I saw news lines that supported the Israeli narrative come out really shook me,\u201d he said in the film. \u201cThere were times where CNN was happy to push hard. But on balance, it\u2019s very clear where we lie, regrettably. And it\u2019s not entirely with the truth.\u201d \u2018An embarrassing moment\u2019 at CNN In November, CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson embedded with the Israeli army to visit Gaza\u2019s bombed-out al-Rantisi Children\u2019s Hospital. Once inside, military spokesperson Daniel Hagari claimed to have found proof Hamas was using the hospital to hide Israeli captives. Hagari showed Robertson a document on the wall written in Arabic, which he said was a roster of Hamas members watching over the captives. \u201cThis is a guarding list. Every terrorist has his own shift,\u201d Hagari told Robertson. Adam recalled the broadcast as \u201can embarrassing moment\u201d for CNN. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a Hamas roster at all,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was a calendar, and written in Arabic were the days of the week. But the report that came out from Nic Robertson just swallowed up Israel\u2019s claim.\u201d To make matters worse, the Israeli claim had already been debunked by Arabic speakers on social media before the CNN footage aired, and, according to multiple CNN journalists and an internal WhatsApp chat seen by Al Jazeera, a Palestinian producer alerted her colleagues, including Robertson, but was ignored. After the report aired on television, they said, another producer tried to get it corrected before it was posted online. \u201cOne colleague saw the report and flagged to Nic, [saying,] \u2018Hold on, people are saying that this is not accurate,’\u201d Adam said. \u201cAnd apparently, Nic said, \u2018Are you meaning to say that Hagari is lying to us?\u2019 \u201cThere was a chance for this to get stopped. But Nic was adamant, and it went out. He\u2019s a very experienced correspondent. If you are trusting the Israeli government over your own colleagues, then you need to have your wrist slapped at the very least because your reporting has given cover to the Israeli operation.\u201d No proof ever emerged of captives being held at al-Rantisi hospital. Adam also said there was a period of time when CNN journalists \u201ccouldn\u2019t call air strikes in Gaza air strikes unless we had confirmation from the Israelis\u201d. \u201cWe would not be doing this in any other place. We would not tolerate the need to ask, say, the Russians whether they bombed a hospital in Kyiv.\u201d Recently, when health officials in Gaza announced that Israeli attacks had killed more than 40,000 people, CNN Managing Editor Mike McCarthy ordered his team to \u201ccontextualise and hold Hamas accountable\u201d, Adam said. \u201cThat was reflected in the framing from the shows,\u201d he added. Informing viewers of the grim milestone in August, CNN presenter Becky Anderson said in a news show, \u201cThe Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the October 7 Hamas massacre in Israel that triggered the war,\u201d and cautioned that CNN could not verify the toll. Leading experts have said the figure is likely an undercount. \u2018No balance\u2019 at the BBC Sara, a former BBC journalist, accused the British broadcaster of a double standard in interviewing guests. She told Al Jazeera that she no longer saw her future at the BBC in part because of a \u201csort of unwillingness among the executive\u201d to address concerns around editorial bias. In the days after October 7, the BBC set up an internal group chat in which producers could screen potential interviewees based on their online footprint. \u201cIt was overwhelmingly guests on the Palestinian side of things who were being looked into,\u201d she said. \u201cPalestinians [were] being flagged up for using the word Zionist, which isn\u2019t something to flag necessarily.\u201d She said that \u201cnow and again\u201d Israeli guests were vetted. \u201cBut there was no balance in what was going on. Israeli spokespeople who we did have on were given a lot of free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback,\u201d she said. For example, Israeli politician Idan Roll on October 17 told BBC presenter Maryam Moshiri that \u201cbabies were set on fire\u201d and \u201cbabies were shot in the head\u201d during the Hamas incursion into southern Israel, claims that Israel has not proved and Hamas rejects. Moshiri did not challenge or probe his claim. Over the past year, experts and veteran journalists have increasingly accused top Western media outlets of maintaining a pro-Israel bias while dehumanising Palestinians and minimising their suffering. A small number of journalists at The New York Times and the BBC have resigned publicly, citing their consciences. Others have tried to change things from the inside with campaigns and internal meetings. \u201cThis is a moment in history that we don\u2019t often see where we actually see genocide being perpetrated as it\u2019s happening,\u201d Craig Mokhiber, a United Nations human rights official who resigned last year over the organisation\u2019s response to Israel\u2019s war in Gaza, told Al Jazeera. \u201cIn a situation where Western governments like the United States, the UK and others have been complicit, you\u2019ve got Western media that have actually become a part of the mechanism of genocide. That\u2019s what\u2019s different. That\u2019s what\u2019s frightening.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ten journalists who have covered the war on Gaza for two of the world\u2019s leading news networks, CNN and the BBC, have revealed the inner…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20056,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}