Broadcast journalists are sometimes accused of bias against Israel.
Such claims have been made, among others, by the pro-Israel media monitoring group BBC Watch and the right-of-centre press. More recently, the BBC was criticised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and a former BBC executive for not referring to Hamas as “terrorists”.
These accusations tend to rely on highlighting a single issue or event that is then extensively analysed and presented as symptomatic of a widespread problem. However, to properly assess whether coverage is balanced, what is needed is systematic academic research that relies on tested social science methods.
