The Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) analysed the BBC’s coverage of the 12 months following Hamas’ one-day attack on 7 October 2023. Their huge report reveals a clear dynamic: “the marginalisation of Palestinian suffering and the amplification of Israeli narratives.”

The report showed that, despite the killing of 34 times more Palestinians, the BBC gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage, interviewed more than twice as many Israelis as Palestinians (1,085 v 2,350), and shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian one (2,340 v 217).

Complicit in genocide

The report, which examined over 35,000 pieces of content produced by “the world’s most trusted broadcaster,” is full of similarly shocking evidence. But perhaps the most deplorable is the BBC’s failure to report confessions of genocidal intent by Israel’s leaders. Not a single BBC article reported Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu’s biblical “Amalek” reference – a people the Jews were commanded by God to annihilate – or president Herzog’s claim of Palestinian collective responsibility. Just 12 out of 3,873 articles bothered to mention former defence minister Gallant’s statement in which he referred to Palestinians as “human animals”, ordered “a complete siege on the Gaza strip”, and promised “we will eliminate everything”. Genocidal intent is notoriously difficult to prove when classifying an act as genocide, yet here are Israel’s own leaders, readily admitting their intention to wipe out an entire people.

Peter Oborne, one of several journalists to question the BBC about the findings in the report during a parliamentary meeting, said: “You never educated your audience about the genocidal remarks, and according to this report, on one hundred occasions, one hundred occasions, you’ve closed down the references to genocide by your guests. This makes you complicit.”

Lack of crucial context

Oborne’s brilliant tirade, which can be viewed here, also flagged the BBC’s failure to report on two Israeli military doctrines – the Hannibal directive and the Dayiha doctrine – which provide essential context to understanding Israel’s response to the 7 October attacks.

The Hannibal directive allows the Israeli military to use any force necessary to prevent its soldiers from being captured and taken into enemy territory – even if that means opening fire on those captives. A major investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that the procedure was activated during the 7 October attacks, and a UN report concluded that at least 14 Israeli civilians were deliberately killed by their own army on that day as a result of the directive. But as Israel refused to cooperate with the UN investigation – and barred medical professionals and others from doing so – we do not know the true figure. A year-long investigation by Electronic Intifada, however, found it to be in the hundreds.

The BBC has also never mentioned Israel’s Dahiya doctrine. Named after a Beirut suburb that was decimated by Israel in 2006, the Dahiya doctrine is the use of disproportionate force to destroy civilians and everything that supports them so that they will never again contemplate resistance. It is a form of collective punishment – and unquestionably a war crime – that has been applied to Gaza over the past 20 months. The BBC’s decision not to ever mention this doctrine is, as Oborne calls it, “a grotesque omission”, for it provides fundamental context to Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza following 7 October.

No desire to change

You only have to look at the representative the BBC chose to respond to the accusations in the report and defend its Gaza coverage to see how little it cares – and how unlikely it is to change. Richard Burgess, executive news editor at the BBC, admitted he’s “not a Middle East expert” and doesn’t claim to understand the doctrines. A rightly exasperated Oborne responded, “Then send someone along who does!” When a senior news editor is asked to justify their organisation’s coverage of what is widely considered a genocide, ignorance of the full facts is truly an appalling defense.

Soon after the report was released – as if to demonstrate its complete unwillingness to modify its pattern of bias – the BBC announced that its long-awaited documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, would not be aired. The film explores the systematic destruction of Gaza’s health service by Israeli forces as well as the abuse suffered by Palestinian medics. The BBC claimed that broadcasting the film could create “a perception of partiality”. But as former BBC journalist and news presenter Karishma Patel tweeted: “How? This film shows the reality of Israel’s actions. You can’t fling the accusation of bias at realities you simply don’t want on air.” Just as the harrowing documentary on life in Gaza seen through the eyes of Palestinian children was pulled by the BBC months previously, the BBC’s silencing of Palestinian voices appears to be institutional. It’s simply what it does.

Israel apologists

And just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, it does. On 27 June, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a horrific article about the Gaza Health Foundation (GHF) – the controversial Israeli-controlled aid distribution centres. The IDF soldiers Haaretz interviewed confirmed what Palestinians have been claiming for weeks: that soldiers are being ordered to massacre desperate, starving civilians queuing up for food. “It’s a killing field,” one soldier said. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars.” Another added, “Sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces…I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire.”

Did the BBC pick up on this story? Of course it didn’t. It did however publish an ‘explainer’ about the shootings at GHF sites via its Verify service. BBC Verify calls itself a “specialist team of journalists” who “fact-check information, verify video, counter disinformation, and analyse data to separate fact from fake.” But rather than using actual testimony from IDF soldiers to corroborate reports of shootings, their specialist journalists looked at some video footage and concluded that they paint a murky picture: “While the videos show an overall picture of danger and chaos, they do not definitively show who is responsible for firing.”

The rest of the article reads like a PR piece for the government of Israel: Israeli government spokesman David Mencer is quoted saying that the reports of hundreds of civilians being killed is “another untruth”; Hamas are of course likely responsible; while a GHF spokesperson is “pleased” with its first month of operations. We know the BBC Verify journalists will have read the Haaretz article. That they chose to completely ignore it and concoct this pile of Israel apologia is frankly appalling.

The truth is coming out

The BBC obviously has no intention of reforming and will continue to provide cover for Israel’s crimes for as long as it possibly can. But despite their best efforts, the truth about Israel is finding its way out. The documentary that the BBC refused to air has now found a home on Channel 4 in the UK and on Zeteo News worldwide. And the BBC’s attempt to control their Glastonbury coverage by barring pro-Palestinian band Kneecap from their live broadcast, failed spectacularly when punk duo Bob Vylan chose to use their set to condemn Israel’s war crimes, live on air. Lead singer Bobby called out the UK and US for being “complicit in war crimes” and led chants of “free Palestine” and “death to the IDF”, which the crowd enthusiastically shouted back. The crowd’s response, and the fact that a huge number of other artists also spoke out in support of Palestine, suggests the tide is shifting.

True to form, the BBC swiftly removed Bob Vylan’s performance from iPlayer and released a grovelling statement expressing regret that it hadn’t pulled the live stream and describing Vylan’s words as “deeply offensive” and “utterly unacceptable.” That our state broadcaster is so quick to condemn words but ignores a massacre of unarmed civilians tells you everything you need to know about the BBC – and you can’t help but sense that it is losing control of the narrative. Anyone with any conscience simply cannot agree that calling out a genocide is worse than committing one.

History will not be kind to the genocide enablers. And thanks to reports like CfMM’s, we will always remember on whose side the BBC stood.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Sylvia Monkhouse.

The Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) analysed the BBC’s coverage of the 12 months following Hamas’ one-day attack on 7 October 2023. Their huge report reveals a clear dynamic: “the marginalisation of Palestinian suffering and the amplification of Israeli narratives.”

The report showed that, despite the killing of 34 times more Palestinians, the BBC gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage, interviewed more than twice as many Israelis as Palestinians (1,085 v 2,350), and shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian one (2,340 v 217).

Complicit in genocide

The report, which examined over 35,000 pieces of content produced by “the world’s most trusted broadcaster,” is full of similarly shocking evidence. But perhaps the most deplorable is the BBC’s failure to report confessions of genocidal intent by Israel’s leaders. Not a single BBC article reported Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu’s biblical “Amalek” reference – a people the Jews were commanded by God to annihilate – or president Herzog’s claim of Palestinian collective responsibility. Just 12 out of 3,873 articles bothered to mention former defence minister Gallant’s statement in which he referred to Palestinians as “human animals”, ordered “a complete siege on the Gaza strip”, and promised “we will eliminate everything”. Genocidal intent is notoriously difficult to prove when classifying an act as genocide, yet here are Israel’s own leaders, readily admitting their intention to wipe out an entire people.

Peter Oborne, one of several journalists to question the BBC about the findings in the report during a parliamentary meeting, said: “You never educated your audience about the genocidal remarks, and according to this report, on one hundred occasions, one hundred occasions, you’ve closed down the references to genocide by your guests. This makes you complicit.”

Lack of crucial context

Oborne’s brilliant tirade, which can be viewed here, also flagged the BBC’s failure to report on two Israeli military doctrines – the Hannibal directive and the Dayiha doctrine – which provide essential context to understanding Israel’s response to the 7 October attacks.

The Hannibal directive allows the Israeli military to use any force necessary to prevent its soldiers from being captured and taken into enemy territory – even if that means opening fire on those captives. A major investigation by Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed that the procedure was activated during the 7 October attacks, and a UN report concluded that at least 14 Israeli civilians were deliberately killed by their own army on that day as a result of the directive. But as Israel refused to cooperate with the UN investigation – and barred medical professionals and others from doing so – we do not know the true figure. A year-long investigation by Electronic Intifada, however, found it to be in the hundreds.

The BBC has also never mentioned Israel’s Dahiya doctrine. Named after a Beirut suburb that was decimated by Israel in 2006, the Dahiya doctrine is the use of disproportionate force to destroy civilians and everything that supports them so that they will never again contemplate resistance. It is a form of collective punishment – and unquestionably a war crime – that has been applied to Gaza over the past 20 months. The BBC’s decision not to ever mention this doctrine is, as Oborne calls it, “a grotesque omission”, for it provides fundamental context to Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza following 7 October.

No desire to change

You only have to look at the representative the BBC chose to respond to the accusations in the report and defend its Gaza coverage to see how little it cares – and how unlikely it is to change. Richard Burgess, executive news editor at the BBC, admitted he’s “not a Middle East expert” and doesn’t claim to understand the doctrines. A rightly exasperated Oborne responded, “Then send someone along who does!” When a senior news editor is asked to justify their organisation’s coverage of what is widely considered a genocide, ignorance of the full facts is truly an appalling defense.

Soon after the report was released – as if to demonstrate its complete unwillingness to modify its pattern of bias – the BBC announced that its long-awaited documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, would not be aired. The film explores the systematic destruction of Gaza’s health service by Israeli forces as well as the abuse suffered by Palestinian medics. The BBC claimed that broadcasting the film could create “a perception of partiality”. But as former BBC journalist and news presenter Karishma Patel tweeted: “How? This film shows the reality of Israel’s actions. You can’t fling the accusation of bias at realities you simply don’t want on air.” Just as the harrowing documentary on life in Gaza seen through the eyes of Palestinian children was pulled by the BBC months previously, the BBC’s silencing of Palestinian voices appears to be institutional. It’s simply what it does.

Israel apologists

And just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, it does. On 27 June, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a horrific article about the Gaza Health Foundation (GHF) – the controversial Israeli-controlled aid distribution centres. The IDF soldiers Haaretz interviewed confirmed what Palestinians have been claiming for weeks: that soldiers are being ordered to massacre desperate, starving civilians queuing up for food. “It’s a killing field,” one soldier said. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars.” Another added, “Sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces…I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire.”

Did the BBC pick up on this story? Of course it didn’t. It did however publish an ‘explainer’ about the shootings at GHF sites via its Verify service. BBC Verify calls itself a “specialist team of journalists” who “fact-check information, verify video, counter disinformation, and analyse data to separate fact from fake.” But rather than using actual testimony from IDF soldiers to corroborate reports of shootings, their specialist journalists looked at some video footage and concluded that they paint a murky picture: “While the videos show an overall picture of danger and chaos, they do not definitively show who is responsible for firing.”

The rest of the article reads like a PR piece for the government of Israel: Israeli government spokesman David Mencer is quoted saying that the reports of hundreds of civilians being killed is “another untruth”; Hamas are of course likely responsible; while a GHF spokesperson is “pleased” with its first month of operations. We know the BBC Verify journalists will have read the Haaretz article. That they chose to completely ignore it and concoct this pile of Israel apologia is frankly appalling.

The truth is coming out

The BBC obviously has no intention of reforming and will continue to provide cover for Israel’s crimes for as long as it possibly can. But despite their best efforts, the truth about Israel is finding its way out. The documentary that the BBC refused to air has now found a home on Channel 4 in the UK and on Zeteo News worldwide. And the BBC’s attempt to control their Glastonbury coverage by barring pro-Palestinian band Kneecap from their live broadcast, failed spectacularly when punk duo Bob Vylan chose to use their set to condemn Israel’s war crimes, live on air. Lead singer Bobby called out the UK and US for being “complicit in war crimes” and led chants of “free Palestine” and “death to the IDF”, which the crowd enthusiastically shouted back. The crowd’s response, and the fact that a huge number of other artists also spoke out in support of Palestine, suggests the tide is shifting.

True to form, the BBC swiftly removed Bob Vylan’s performance from iPlayer and released a grovelling statement expressing regret that it hadn’t pulled the live stream and describing Vylan’s words as “deeply offensive” and “utterly unacceptable.” That our state broadcaster is so quick to condemn words but ignores a massacre of unarmed civilians tells you everything you need to know about the BBC – and you can’t help but sense that it is losing control of the narrative. Anyone with any conscience simply cannot agree that calling out a genocide is worse than committing one.

History will not be kind to the genocide enablers. And thanks to reports like CfMM’s, we will always remember on whose side the BBC stood.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Sylvia Monkhouse.

The Supreme Court did not arrive at this pivotal moment by chance. For decades, ultra-wealthy conservative donors, libertarian think tanks, and their allies within the Republican Party have orchestrated a campaign to thwart the federal government’s efforts to regulate corporations — including efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten the profits of the fossil fuel industry. Over the years, they have paid considerable attention to the judiciary, methodically installing conservative judges in anticipation of a case that could kneecap agencies they view as overstepping their authority.

Enter West Virginia v. EPA. The specifics of the case were convoluted, but the arguments at its heart were “a direct shot at the EPA, at their ability to regulate,” said Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center. “To say they’ve been preparing for this moment for 50 years is not an exaggeration.”

To understand this moment, it’s helpful to consider how we got here.

The 1970s marked the dawn of a new era of concern about the environment. Americans were growing increasingly alarmed by high pollution levels and environmental destruction. There had just been an enormous oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, the Cuyahoga River had caught fire in Cleveland, and a thick layer of smog regularly smothered cities like Los Angeles. Congress responded by drafting the country’s bedrock environmental laws: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act of 1970, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act — all passed with bipartisan support.

The sudden expansion of federal powers galvanized a new, hard-line libertarian movement helmed by an oil executive named Charles Koch. Koch had inherited a handful of companies from his father in 1967, including a lucrative refinery in Minnesota and a network of pipelines, barges, and trucks that shipped oil across the country. Koch was an ardent believer in capitalism and opposed any government action that went beyond the protection of private property. As he built his business into the second largest privately-owned company in the country, he also began building a network of think tanks and nonprofits to infuse his fringe views into the mainstream.

According to investigative journalist Jane Mayer’s 2016 book Dark Money, which chronicles how conservative billionaires shaped the radical right, Charles Koch and his brother and business partner, David, have personally spent well over $100 million on advancing a libertarian agenda. But even more consequentially, they streamlined the efforts of a small group of like-minded elites towards building what one Koch operative called a “fully integrated network” that has influenced every aspect of the country’s political system.

The Federalist Society, a conservative group that has grown into the most powerful legal organization in the country, became a critical node in that network. In 1982, law students at the University of Chicago and Yale formed the group to promote a deeply conservative legal perspective. The organization received start-up funding from the conservative John M. Olin Foundation, began hosting annual symposia and opening chapters at prestigious law schools, and soon attracted large donations from the Kochs and their peers.

At first, the Federalist Society was an all-volunteer group geared mainly towards law students. In the early 1990s, it hired one of its first paid employees, Leonard Leo, who expanded the organization to include lawyers, judges, and others. From the early 2000s to 2020, Leo served as the group’s executive vice president, overseeing a network of approximately 60,000 members. (All six conservative justices on the Supreme Court are associated with the organization.) 

The Kochs’ network of conservative billionaires hasn’t only focused on the judiciary. As they poured money into the Federalist Society, they were also pouring money into deregulation efforts, including many related to climate change. Through the years, Koch- and fossil fuel-backed groups like the Global Climate Coalition, American Energy Alliance, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and American Legislative Exchange Council have lobbied against climate legislation and funded research casting doubt on the science and highlighting the costs of taking action.

But it has long been clear to them that the judiciary would be crucial to eviscerating the government’s ability to regulate corporations and to dismantling the administrative state — the government agencies within the executive branch that create and enforce regulations. 

The libertarian groups’ judicial efforts have been focused on usurping a 1984 Supreme Court precedent known as Chevron deference with a relatively new and controversial legal argument known as the major questions doctrine. Chevron deference says that if Congress has not clearly articulated its intention in a law, courts should defer to an agency’s interpretation, as long as that interpretation is reasonable. The idea is that agencies possess expertise that Congress and the courts do not, and that agencies are indirectly accountable to the people through presidential elections. 

To the libertarian movement, “Chevron is anathema,” said Lisa Graves, a former senior official for the Department of Justice who is now the executive director of True North Research. “For decades now, they have been seeking ways to reverse this precedent, to minimize this precedent.”

In its stead, conservatives have put forth the major questions doctrine, which says that in “extraordinary” cases that could have “vast” economic and political consequences, the court can ignore an agency’s interpretation of a broad law and prevent it from enacting a regulation unless it receives clearer authority from Congress.

The Supreme Court decided West Virginia v. EPA based on this argument. In doing so, it has undermined agencies’ ability to enact regulations to respond to new threats to the environment or public health if they lack clear guidance from Congress — which has failed to pass any serious climate legislation or any significant new environmental laws since it last amended the Clean Air Act more than 30 years ago.

“That’s radical,” said Patrick Parenteau, an environmental lawyer and professor at Vermont Law School. “That’s going to have massive implications for environmental law across the board.”

While libertarians have long despised administrative agencies’ ability to regulate corporations, it took a while for them to build up enough influence on federal courts to begin whittling it away. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated Justice Clarence Thomas, a Federalist Society member who has repeatedly objected to Chevron deference, to the Supreme Court. About a decade and half later, President George W. Bush nominated Justice John Roberts, a former Federalist Society member, and Harriet Miers, who was a family friend but not a member. The organization mobilized against Miers, and eventually Bush nominated Justice Samuel Alito, who had long been affiliated with the Federalist Society, instead. Roberts wrote the majority opinion in West Virginia v. EPA, and both Thomas and Alito concurred.

Another major conservative victory came in the mid-2010s, when then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — a Republican from Kentucky and a Koch ally — led a stunningly successful effort to prevent President Barack Obama from appointing federal judges and blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court, which he called “one of my proudest moments.” This paved the way for President Donald Trump to install more than 200 federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices.

Guiding Trump was Leo, then the executive vice president of the Federalist Society. In March 2016, Leo met with Trump and Donald McGahn, a member of the Federalist Society who later served as President Trump’s White House counsel. Leo later gave Trump several lists of potential Supreme Court nominees that the Federalist Society would support, including Justice Neil Gorsuch. The Trump campaign released the lists in an effort to court the Republican base, and in a July 2016 campaign rally in Iowa, Trump said: “If you really like Donald Trump, that’s great, but if you don’t, you have to vote for me anyway. You know why? Supreme Court judges.” About a year later, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett appeared on another list of Federalist Society recommendations.

Once Trump was elected, Leo shepherded the nominations of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett through the Senate. According to Internal Revenue Service filings compiled by True North Research, between 2014 and 2020, Leo and his allies raised more than $580 million for conservative nonprofits that do not have to disclose their donors. The network of nonprofits used much of that to hire conservative media relations firms to place opinion essays, schedule pundits on television shows, send speakers to rallies, and create online videos — all to drum up public support and pressure senators to confirm Trump’s picks.

Now, decades of coordinated efforts by ultra-wealthy conservative donors, libertarian think tanks, and the Republican Party are all coming to a head. While the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. EPA could have been even more restrictive, it is still a consequential win for fossil fuel interests and a blow to American efforts to address climate change. To Graves, the Supreme Court’s new direction amounts to revival of the robber baron era, “when courts put their thumb on the scale to strike down laws sought by people in our democracy in favor of corporations,” she said. “You have a Supreme Court that has been captured by special interests.”

Things could soon get even more bleak. Republican state attorneys general are pushing several climate-related cases through the federal court system. The courts could use the major questions doctrine to hobble the government’s ability to restrict tailpipe emissions or to consider the social cost of carbon when reviewing new infrastructure or environmental rules. Parenteau points out that a proposed rule requiring companies to publicly disclose climate risks is now vulnerable, too. 

Congress could act to stem the damage. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has called on her colleagues to expand the court. “I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court, and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court,” she told ABC News. Congress could pass legislation to add more justices, but so far Democratic leadership has not been keen on the idea.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, has argued that the Senate should impeach Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for misleading Congress about their views on Roe v. Wade, another radical ruling handed down by the court last week. “They lied,” she told NBC News. “I believe lying under oath is an impeachable offense.” Removing justices from the court would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate.

In a scathing dissent in West Virginia v. EPA, Justice Elena Kagan wrote: “Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change.” In its most recent decision, “the Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision-maker on climate policy.” She concluded, “I cannot think of many things more frightening.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Supreme Court’s climate decision came out of a decades-long campaign to kneecap regulation on Jun 30, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Julia Kane.