The BBC, Israel, and the Moral Discipline of Balance
Standfirst
Public broadcasters do not merely report events; they help set a society’s moral weather. When balance erodes, trust follows. The BBC’s long struggle to report Israel with accuracy, proportion, and historical literacy is not only an Israeli concern – it is a British one. The intervention of Baroness Ruth Deech offers a moment to pause, recalibrate, and choose renewal over reflex.
I have written before about the BBC and Israel, and I did so with a measure of frustration that came from years of watching patterns repeat themselves. I knew the problem was not episodic, not reducible to a single documentary, headline, or editorial lapse. Still, I did not expect such a candid confirmation of those instincts until I read the recent interview with Ruth Deech.
Sadness was my first response. Not anger. Sadness.
Because when someone who once sat at the heart of the BBC – who served as a governor during some of the most complex periods of Israel’s modern history – says, calmly and carefully, that the problem “hasn’t changed at all,” it forces an uncomfortable reckoning. Not with Israel. With Britain.
Deech’s critique is not shrill. It is not ideological. It is institutional. She describes a culture of groupthink – a well-meaning, liberal, southern English worldview that mistakes moral certainty for moral clarity. A newsroom ecosystem that sees Israel not as a complex democratic society navigating existential threats, but as a fixed symbol within a simplified moral story.
That distinction matters.
Because journalism, at its best, resists simplification. It understands that context is not an indulgence, but an obligation. And yet, time and again, the BBC’s coverage of Israel has flattened history, blurred responsibility, and – most corrosively – trained audiences to distrust Israeli testimony while extending reflexive credibility to Hamas-sourced claims.
This is not an accusation; it is an observable pattern. Headlines that elevate unverified assertions. Israeli responses buried deep in articles, hedged with caveats. Language that studiously avoids calling terrorism by its name, even when the perpetrators proudly embrace it themselves.
When Deech says that “being trusted is not the same as being accurate,” she names the core problem. Trust, when assumed rather than earned, can harden into arrogance. Accuracy then becomes negotiable.
I am thinking here of October 7 – not only the massacre itself, but its media aftermath. The BBC’s initial refusal to describe Hamas as a terrorist organization, despite its proscription under British law. The rapid dissemination of claims about the Al-Ahli Hospital blast that were later contradicted by independent forensic analyses. The decision to air, without interruption, chants of “Death to the IDF” at Glastonbury – a festival broadcast into millions of British homes.
None of these incidents exist in isolation. Together, they form a climate.
For British Jews, that climate has consequences. Deech speaks movingly about university campuses that have become hostile spaces – not because of disagreement, but because of intimidation dressed up as activism. She is right to insist that freedom of speech does not extend to the normalization of hate. A society that cannot draw that line clearly is not being tolerant; it is being evasive.
What troubles me most is not that the BBC makes mistakes. All institutions do. It is the resistance to correction. The complaints process that feels impenetrable. The internal reviews that remain unpublished. The sense that challenges are treated as threats rather than opportunities to improve.
And yet – this is important – Deech does not argue for abandonment. She argues for reform. For training that includes history. For recruitment that broadens ideological range. For an independent ombudsman capable of informed judgment. Her prescription is constructive, not punitive.
That, too, matters.
Because this is not a plea for Israel to be praised. Israel does not need flattery. It needs fairness. It needs to be reported on as other democracies are: critically, yes – but proportionately, historically, and with intellectual honesty.
Israel is not a slogan. It is a society.
It is also, in ways the BBC too rarely explores, a story of resilience and renewal. Of a nation that absorbs trauma and responds not with withdrawal, but with rebuilding. Of innovations in medicine, agriculture, cyber, and emergency response that quietly shape global standards. Of a democracy that argues with itself loudly – often painfully – precisely because it takes moral responsibility seriously.
Innovating the future of Israel is not only about technology. It is about institutional learning. About refusing to let failure calcify into fatalism. About insisting that accountability and self-examination are signs of strength, not weakness.
British public life could learn something from that posture.
The BBC remains one of Britain’s most powerful cultural institutions. With that power comes obligation. Not to please everyone. Not to avoid controversy. But to uphold the discipline of balance – especially when emotions run high and narratives are tempting.
Baroness Deech has done Britain a service by speaking plainly. She has reminded us that institutions drift not because of malice, but because of unexamined habits. Drift can be corrected. But only if acknowledged.
My plea to the BBC, then, is a quiet one.
Pause. Reflect. Relearn.
Remember that history did not begin in 1948, or 1967, or last October. Remember that headlines shape memory. Remember that words spoken lightly can land heavily on communities already under strain.
Fairness is not neutrality between truth and falsehood. It is the patient pursuit of proportion.
If the BBC can recover that discipline, it will not only serve Israel better. It will serve Britain better.
And that, in the long arc of renewal, is a future worth choosing.
- James Ogunleye, PhD, is the founder and editor of RenewingIsrael.org.