‘This is a absolute failure!’ Former advisor to Boris Johnson BLASTS BBC after it breaks own guidelines – ‘So frustrating’
Former advisor to Boris Johnson, Oscar Reddrop, has slammed the latest reports about the BBC as an “absolute failure” and said that it is “so frustrating” that the broadcaster has broken its own guidelines.
The BBC breached its own editorial guidelines 1,533 times in its early coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, a report that relied heavily on AI by the Telegraph has found.
Speaking about the findings on GB News, Reddrop said: “That bias, I’m surprised isn’t a bigger story.
“It’s probably, internationally, the biggest news story we’ve had over the last year or so. And for the BBC, which is just something that, I don’t want to bash too much, there’s a lot to be proud of, in terms of the BBC and it does some really good stuff.
“But this is an absolute failing on probably the biggest international news story that they could have covered.”
He added: “It’s hugely contentious. As we all know, it’s a hugely emotive subject.
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“But it was frustrating because you were watching pretty much all other broadcasters be quite comfortable in describing her mass as a terrorist organisation.
“It was really frustrating as someone who actually does care about the BBC. It was so frustrating.”
Commentator Nichi Hodgson added: “It felt that they were trying to sit on the sidelines more, even though the reporting ended up being more biased.
“They were, it felt like they were being cowardly for me.”
A BBC spokesman said the network had “serious questions about the methodology of this report, particularly its heavy reliance on AI to analyse impartiality and its interpretation of the BBC’s editorial guidelines.”
The spokesman added: “We don’t think coverage can be assessed solely by counting particular words divorced from context.
“We are required to achieve due impartiality, rather than the ‘balance of sympathy’ proposed in the report, and we believe our knowledgeable and dedicated correspondents are achieving this.”
The report stated that in BBC’s coverage, Israel was associated with war crimes, genocide, and international law violations more frequently than Hamas was.
It also claimed that the BBC downplayed Hamas terrorism, and said that the BBC’s Arabic service was the most biased.
The research analyzed four months of the BBC’s output across television, radio, online news, podcasts, and social media.