BBC Bias Persists: The British Government-Financed News Outlet Verifies News Only When it Fits its Narrative

Journalism Media and communication studies News Reviews

Months after the start of the so-called “Arab Spring”, a team of researchers became interested in this protest movement and its potential for bringing positive change in the Islamic world in the area of governance and economic development. To stay current the team developed a routine for checking major news outlets as well as social media platforms. Given the reputation of the BBC as an independent news source, its website and streaming services were a regular stop for the team. One morning, around 9 am, a team member saw that the Arabic section of the BBC website displayed this photo and headline.

At this point, Western mainstream media outlets portrayed the events in Syria as a case of an authoritarian regime brutally attempting to crush a peaceful uprising. The photo and the headline perfectly fit this narrative. Upon visiting the same site just hours apart, the team noticed that that compelling photo was taken down. The text changed little, but the photo, which told a story of cruelty better than a 1000-word essay, was replaced by another generic photo, hardly as memorable and as shocking as the one that was posted just few hours earlier.

Given the power of that photo to capture sympathy for the Syrian “rebels” and disdain toward the Syrian government, it was only natural that one would become curious about the disappearance of such informative photograph.

It took few days for the team of research assistants and their mentor to find the reason for the removal of the photo. The BBC received a call from the photojournalist who took that photo to protest not only the illegal use of his photograph but also for failing to undertake due diligence steps to verify it. It turned out that the photo was documenting an event that took place in 2003 in Iraq, now under the US occupation, not an event that took place in Syrian in 2012. The statements, below, from the photojournalist was published on May 28, 2012:

Here is the question that provided the researchers with a new mission: If this recklessness with facts can be done by the reputable BBC, what is the extent of biased reporting by other news media outlets that must keep its “masters” happy to generate profit or remain free from government heavy handedness for not towing the official line? To answer that question, the original team embarked on a ten-year project of monitoring media coverage of key events by more than 300 major news outlets. The Pandemic and now the war in Ukraine gave new life to this project that documents media coverage of events with significant global implications. To date, and with the third cohort of researchers taking over, more than 300,000 data points and digital documents have been collected to preserve the first draft of history as seen through the eyes of journalists, news editors, and media outlets.

What we learned is this: Wars are never fought just with bullets. Before, during, and after war, there always must be a war with words–a war of narratives. Narratives are needed to motivate people to go to war, to justify an ongoing war to sustain support, and heal and cleanse the sould and minds who survive the war by telling them about the praiseworthy causes for which many died and much was destroyed.

Considering the amount of money spent on building media empires controlled directly or indirectly by governments and/or entities aligned with governments, it is not an exaggeration to compare media rooms to war rooms and media stories to weapons. Armed conflicts are fought with arms, soft confrontations are fought with words delivered by sophisticated news media, including radio and television, and digital social platforms. Both kinds of conflicts rely and execute deliberately strategies designed to achieve specific goals. News Bombardment Strategy refers to output of news stories about a specific event in a specific country and using specific narratives in high volume and abundance, making the flow of news stories similar to the flow bullets from a machine gun. The constant flow of news stories in such high volume takes away the power of independent thought from the audience and substitutes for it with media narratives.

 

In this particular case focusing on British media, and with this BBC headline and selection of photos, it is fair to report that the BBC remains very consistent: It must verify claims made by governments categorized as “bad” by the British government and its allies; but does not have to verify any claim that come from the “good” side as determined by the British government and its allies.

In the case of the current conflict in Ukraine, Western media would have frontpage coverage of any allegation of war crimes or human rights abuse when made by the Ukrainian government; but would ignore or inside-page any such claim if it comes from the Russian government or independent organizations. Short term, this instrumentalization of human rights is the biggest threat to human rights. In the long term, the selective use of human rights, depending on the calculus of politics and economics, should become so evident and so shameful that very few people who really care about human rights would believe governments and the media outlets associated with them when they report about such events, driving them instead to seek other sources and develop filters that would shield them from propaganda and posturing.

History repeats itself; or more appropriately, history when written by the same actors, rarely change. Ten years ago, Syrian rebels executed government soldiers. Western mainstream media ignored these occurrences claiming that they cannot verify them independently. Images like the one below could not be found on BBC’s frontpage because showing it could generate some sympathy for the soldiers of the Syrian government.

Today, Ukrainian soldiers stand accused of executing Russian soldiers; the BBC covered the event with a headline in the form of a question and concluding that it cannot verify the claims by the Russian government. Images depicting dead soldiers, facing the ground with hands behind their backs are casually dismissed with a question that suggests, were they really shot?

The power of the media is beyond need for proof. The connection between military, political, and communcation output is now equally evident thanks to advances in research tehnology that allow for the storage and analysis of large amounts of data. Peoples wellbeing and wellfare is now dependent on what they consume in terms of media narratives.


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