Complaint
The programme included a contribution from the BBC’s International Editor, Jeremy Bowen, who said this about the effects of Israeli military action: “In Gaza nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes. Mostly civilians”. A listener complained that this reflected bias against Israel because it did not make clear that a number of Palestinian deaths resulted from Hamas actions; that casualty figures emanating from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry were in any case unreliable; that “mostly” carried the unsubstantiated connotation that “a high majority” of the dead were civilians rather than combatants; and that it failed to compare the ratio of civilian to combatant deaths to the ratios in other conflicts. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of impartiality and accuracy.
Outcome
The BBC’s Editorial Guidelines refer to “due” accuracy and impartiality, which means that it should be “adequate and appropriate” in the context of the output and that audiences should not be “materially misled”. While it is generally recognised that an unknown number of Palestinian deaths have resulted from Hamas action (such as crossfire or missiles falling short), the ECU saw no grounds for believing they were on a scale which would have made the 42,000 figure materially misleading to listeners. The ECU noted that the UN and other independent bodies consider the Gaza Ministry of Health figures reliable and that recent statistical analysis had argued that they were a significant underestimate. The ECU also noted that the analysis cited by the complainant put the ratio of civilians to combatants at 41% to 59%, and that other estimates from Israeli sources put the civilian figure at 61% and 66% respectively while estimates from non-Israeli sources ranged as high as 90%. In the ECU’s view, this warranted Mr Bowen’s use of “mostly”. The ECU did not consider that a brief reference to casualty figures in a report mainly focused on the wider issues of the conflict needed to be put into the context of civilian-combatant casualty ratios in other conflicts. Overall, the ECU found nothing inconsistent with the BBC’s standards of due impartiality and accuracy.
Not upheld