Accusations over media bias fly from all directions amid Israel's war on Gaza

Pope Francis was more convincingly impartial when he exhorted believers "to take only one side in this conflict, that of peace. But not with words but with prayer, with total dedication."

Meanwhile, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, gathered representatives of the various faiths around him and said something similar. His were not empty words. Welby had actually visited the hospital in question. When he spoke of his 'profound mourning', you felt he really meant it.

Religious leaders have a talent for drawing moral lessons from events. It's in their job description. The opposite may be said of politicians.

Consequently, it is rarely edifying to see politicians attempt the same trick. This has something to do with our assumption that whatever a politician seems to be saying, he or she has carefully weighed the effects of saying it beforehand.

When they fail to weigh their words carefully enough, and their true sentiments are briefly revealed, it is the linguistic equivalent of wardrobe malfunction. Rather than win praise for their candour, they are accused of committing a gaffe.

Speaking of which, certain people in the media have also been guilty of gaffes lately. The country's first MP of Palestinian descent, Layla Moran, was asked on ITV's Good Morning Britain to tell viewers about events in Gaza, where she has relatives.

What she wasn't expecting was Richard Madeley's question: "With your family connections in Gaza, did you have any indication of what was going to happen ten days ago, two weeks ago? Was there any word on the street?"

Moran replied: "Not this, not this. I think everyone… everyone has been surprised by, first of all, partly the timing, the sophistication (and) the way that it's happened. What I will say is that I have been warning, and others have in Parliament as well, for a number of years…"

She proceeded to describe the plight of Palestinians, the lack of a negotiated settlement and the need to stop the cycle of violence, all the while aware that the interviewer had just implied that her family might have known about the attacks beforehand. Madeley has since apologised.

Since the crisis in Israel began less than two weeks ago, there have been numerous other instances of people removing all doubt without delay.

Take the BBC, the traditional whipping boy of the governing party in Britain. Since the war began, they have managed to please none of the people none of the time.

The corporation prides itself on its impartiality. Accordingly, they have refused to refer to Hamas as 'terrorists' – they prefer the term 'militants' – on the basis that terrorist is the designation chosen by the government, of which they are independent. This fastidiousness was a nuance too far for a group of pro-Israel protesters who assembled outside the BBC's headquarters.

Those same protesters might not have been paying attention when the BBC referred to pro-Palestinian protesters as Hamas supporters. There was an apology on air after that little slip-up. But the pro-Palestine protesters had already made their views known about the BBC coverage in general by turning up on a separate occasion to the pro-Israel protesters and daubing the doors and windows red.

They had apparently missed a moving interview with a man in Gaza city who anticipated dying there rather than give up his home, nor had they clocked that the BBC had their own Palestinian commentator, Rushdi Abou Alouf, reporting directly – and chillingly – from the war zone.   

Since then, with the bombardment of the Gaza strip continuing apace, the massive explosion at the hospital led to further controversy about the BBC, with the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, telling the British Prime Minister, 'We feel that… the way the BBC characterises Hamas is a distortion of the facts.'

On 19 October, the government's official X account went further, accusing BBC World of 'blood libel.' The reference was to antisemitic accusations (dating back to medieval times) that Jews murdered Christian children as part of their rituals. 'We see you,' the tweet concluded, 'and now everyone else does.'

The BBC defended its coverage on its corrections page, but conceded that its reporter, Jon Donnison, had been wrong to speculate in his analysis, broadcast directly after the attack. "We accept that even in this fast-moving situation it was wrong to speculate in this way, although he did not at any point report that it was an Israeli strike", they said. "This doesn't represent the entirety of the BBC's output and anyone watching, listening to or reading our coverage can see we have set out both sides' competing claims about the explosion, clearly showing who is saying them, and what we do or don't know."

It is arguable that setting out 'competing claims' about any aspect of the war gets the BBC into trouble. Even being on the side of peace, as the Pope urges his believers to be, is not a universally acceptable maxim. Pacifism is not self-evidently a good thing. But without getting too caught up in moral arguments, the effort to achieve impartiality is ongoing, and if you are managing to please neither side, perhaps you really are succeeding. The 1,500 complaints about the BBC's coverage of the war were split fifty-fifty.

Meanwhile, Sky News has had its own wobbles. It interviewed the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot. He was very measured, given the circumstances. This reasonable tone did not prevent one of the channel's top anchors and a correspondent summing up his position as 'the Israelis had it coming.'

This was the result of an argument Zomlot had made that the infiltration of Israel by Hamas stemmed from a long history of oppression. Indeed, there was an insistence at first, across the media, on getting people to condemn the terrorists. Any attempt to discuss the causes was routinely characterised as sympathy for Hamas.

It is a valid question, whether any of these problems could possibly have been avoided. Even if they had, others would have arisen. Certain clichés spring readily to mind, like the fog of war and truth being the first casualty. As Rafael Behr pointed out in the Guardian (19 October 2023), Shakespeare opened Henry IV Part II with Rumour alone on stage, stuffing the ears of men with false reports. 'The difference now,' he went on, 'is that Rumour moves at the speed of a photon down an optical fibre.'

But truth hasn't been the only thing of value to go down the tubes this time round. Journalistic standards have come under immense strain. When each side's truth is the other side's lie, it's never easy to be impartial.

Biden's comparison of bloody conflict with a game was true in one sense at least: it's the decent journalist who gets the thankless job of referee, and even the very best referee is sometimes accused of favouring the other team.