When the bombs stop falling, scrutiny should begin. Ben de Pear, the former editor of Channel 4 News, has called for the BBC to confront what he describes as a “failure on almost every level” in its coverage of the Gaza war. Writing for Representology at Cardiff University’s invitation, he argues that the national broadcaster must examine not only why it dropped his documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, but why its journalism, across television, radio and online,failed to meet the moment.
De Pear is no outsider throwing stones. For years he reported from Gaza and Israel (including on a parallel trip with this author), and he understands the dangers and pressures that come with covering that conflict. Given this, his criticism is unsparing.
The BBC, he writes, was paralysed by fear: fear of being accused of bias, fear of offending Israel’s supporters, and fear of images too raw for its audiences. The result, he says, was a distortion of reality in which Israel’s military actions were presented as proportionate responses, while the scale of Palestinian suffering was blunted by euphemism.
In de Pear’s account, the broadcaster’s problem is not only one of editorial judgement but of institutional culture. Lawyers, public-relations managers and “Ed Pol” officers (the BBC’s internal editorial policy team) now shape output as much as journalists do. He recalls being told that the UN could not be trusted as an independent source, that Amnesty International’s investigations were unreliable, and that interviews with prisoners under duress could not be used. These decisions, made in the name of neutrality, produced something else: paralysis.
“The BBC has suspended all the normal rules of journalism in its coverage of Gaza and Israel since the October 7th attacks,” he writes, “rendering it not only unrecognisable but also highly compromised.”
Nowhere, de Pear contends, was that failure more visible than in the decision not to air Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. The film, commissioned by the BBC, documented the targeting of hospitals and medics during Israel’s assault. It was later shelved, and the BBC falsely implied its producers were to blame.
“This is not so much about the dropping of our film,” he says, “but its coverage across all platforms.” For him, the episode symbolises a deeper retreat from courage.
The argument is less about bias than about the collapse of moral clarity. Since the attacks of October 7th, the BBC has been careful to present the war as a clash between two sides of roughly equal weight. In doing so, it has often blurred the distinction between aggression and survival. As Israel’s bombardment levelled neighbourhoods and killed thousands—many of them children—the BBC’s coverage, de Pear says, remained trapped in the language of balance. “Compassion fatigue,” he writes, “has become compassion failure.”
There are structural reasons for this. The BBC regulates itself on three principles: fairness, accuracy and impartiality. OFCOM, its external regulator, relies on two—fairness and accuracy. But in practice, these principles have become a straitjacket. Journalists err on the side of caution, wary that one complaint could lead to disciplinary action. During de Pear’s own decade at Channel 4, he says, they lived under similar rules but were guided by a single principle: public interest. At the BBC, public interest has been displaced by institutional anxiety.
He accuses the corporation of having created an echo chamber. Experienced correspondents who tried to reflect the reality of Gaza, he claims, were overruled by managers in London. Editors in secure offices replaced reporters in the field. A “clique” of senior executives, he suggests, was more concerned with reputation management than truth. He sees the BBC bosses managing up to the political and lobbying level, not listening down to experience and to the cries from Gaza.
That self-protective instinct is visible in the BBC’s treatment of images. Where Channel 4 showed the human cost of bombing—mangled bodies, destroyed homes, families in mourning—the BBC largely chose restraint. De Pear argues that this editorial sanitisation, however well intentioned, has moral consequences. Without pictures of the dead, he writes, the public cannot grasp the true scale of violence. “If you have endless images of dead children, they should be seen so that the viewer can be shocked. By not showing them, you are removed from truth.”
The BBC’s defenders will say that such caution is a hallmark of responsibility, not cowardice. They note that images of war can inflame tensions and traumatise audiences. Yet the issue, as de Pear presents it, is not taste but truth. A broadcaster that cannot bring itself to show the results of modern warfare risks normalising that warfare. “To ignore or misreport something on the scale of Israel’s assault on Gaza,” he writes, “takes some effort.”
His essay ends with five lessons. Context, he says, is essential—both the historical context of occupation and the human context of civilian death. False equivalence must end. Regulation should not suffocate editorial courage. The BBC must resist becoming a closed circle and remember that journalism is not public relations. “The BBC has managed this story,” he concludes, “as an exercise in PR—not journalism.”
De Pear’s call is not vengeful but reformist. He sees the current ceasefire as an opportunity—a moment for introspection before the next war begins. “The audience,” he warns, “and more crucially its own journalists demand it.” For an organisation that has long prided itself on impartiality, that demand may be the hardest to hear. But unless the BBC confronts the limits of its own caution, its silence on Gaza will be remembered not as neutrality, but as complicity.
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