News
BBC Arabic is corroding the corporation with Middle East-imported extremism
The deeply flawed broadcasting service which its senior executive praises for being ‘almost as trusted as Al-Jazeera’ is beyond repair
November 17, 2025 19:44
The deeply flawed broadcasting service which its senior executive praises for being ‘almost as trusted as Al-Jazeera’ is beyond repair
November 17, 2025 19:44It seems satire is alive and well at the BBC. How else to explain a senior BBC executive – still in post after the resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness – defending the deeply flawed output of the corporation’s Arabic service by claiming it is “almost as trusted as Al-Jazeera”?
Sadly, Jonathan Munro, the BBC’s global news director under whose remit BBC Arabic falls, was not joking. He had been referring to an audience survey showing that the service ranked just behind Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-run broadcaster widely regarded as a Hamas mouthpiece – an allegation the Qatar-run broadcaster denies.
Munro’s boast came as a private response to overwhelming evidence that BBC Arabic has given grotesquely disproportionate prominence to Hamas narratives in its coverage of the Gaza war.
Treating the finding that Arabic-speaking audiences are content with BBC Arabic’s coverage almost as much as they are with Al-Jazeera’s as a point of pride rather than shame is indeed laughable.
Yet it is only one of many revelations in a confidential memo, recently leaked to the Telegraph, written by independent adviser and former journalist Michael Prescott. Circulated to the entire BBC board, Prescott’s report lays bare how the Arabic service has become a reliable ally of Hamas’s propaganda machine, in utter dereliction of BBC editorial guidelines and always at the expense of Israel and Jewish communities worldwide, including Britain’s own.
For those who have monitored the Arabic service closely, Prescott’s finding that these problems are “systemic” is not new. What is shocking are the details. A BBC Arabic contributor who once declared that Jews should be burned “as Hitler did” appeared on air 244 times. Another freelancer who called Jews “devils” has been featured 522 times. That such individuals were permitted to report unchallenged on the Gaza war even after their antisemitic records were exposed speaks volumes about the culture of bias for which BBC Arabic editors are responsible, and which UK taxpayers and licence fee payers have been funding for many years.
More disturbing findings: according to Prescott, between May and October 2024 BBC Arabic failed to publish any of the 19 English-language stories on Hamas’s hostages, ran no pieces critical of the terror group, and consistently downplayed Israeli suffering. Rather than a public broadcasting service worthy of its name, this can only be described as extremist advocacy, inflaming prejudice against Israel and fuelling conflict rather than informing and encouraging debate.
As the Telegraph revealed last weekend, drawing upon research by Camera (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis), BBC Arabic had to make corrections or clarifications on 215 stories over the course of the war. That’s more than two pieces of information each week over two years found to be biased, inaccurate or misleading.
But the rot runs deeper still. Prescott’s memo quotes Munro praising BBC Arabic’s reporters for delivering “exceptional journalism”, calling them “an unrivalled source of knowledge” for the wider BBC. Remember: among those reporters is Sally Nabil, who, shortly after the horrors of October 7, “liked” a series of posts praising and justifying the massacre, one of them describing it as a “morning of hope”. Evidently lacking the basic journalistic skill of distinguishing combatants from civilians, not only does she remain employed at BBC Arabic, but her reporting on alleged civilian casualties in Beirut following an IDF raid has even been broadcast to British audiences on BBC Breakfast.
Nabil is one of at least six BBC Arabic staff members who have repeatedly posted or liked comments glorifying violence against Israel’s Jewish civilians, yet faced no meaningful consequences even after being publicly exposed. For Munro to hold such individuals up as an “unrivalled source of knowledge” for the rest of the BBC to rely on reveals a worse yet truth about how the corporation now operates. Rather than projecting British values abroad, BBC Arabic is exporting its own contaminated narratives back into the English-language newsroom, having imported them from extremists in the Middle East.
This inversion of purpose directly contradicts the “soft power” doctrine on which the BBC’s foreign language services were founded. Here is at least part of the explanation for why anti-Israel bias has become so deeply entrenched across the corporation. BBC Arabic is not merely failing in its mission; it is actively corroding the editorial standards the entire BBC claims to uphold.
A full parliamentary inquiry – or, failing that, the closure of the Arabic service – may now be the only means left to protect the national broadcaster from being consumed by its own indefensible bias.
David Grom is a Camera Arabic researcher
Yet it is only one of many revelations in a confidential memo, recently leaked to the Telegraph, written by independent adviser and former journalist Michael Prescott. Circulated to the entire BBC board, Prescott’s report lays bare how the Arabic service has become a reliable ally of Hamas’s propaganda machine, in utter dereliction of BBC editorial guidelines and always at the expense of Israel and Jewish communities worldwide, including Britain’s own.
For those who have monitored the Arabic service closely, Prescott’s finding that these problems are “systemic” is not new. What is shocking are the details. A BBC Arabic contributor who once declared that Jews should be burned “as Hitler did” appeared on air 244 times. Another freelancer who called Jews “devils” has been featured 522 times. That such individuals were permitted to report unchallenged on the Gaza war even after their antisemitic records were exposed speaks volumes about the culture of bias for which BBC Arabic editors are responsible, and which UK taxpayers and licence fee payers have been funding for many years.
More disturbing findings: according to Prescott, between May and October 2024 BBC Arabic failed to publish any of the 19 English-language stories on Hamas’s hostages, ran no pieces critical of the terror group, and consistently downplayed Israeli suffering. Rather than a public broadcasting service worthy of its name, this can only be described as extremist advocacy, inflaming prejudice against Israel and fuelling conflict rather than informing and encouraging debate.
As the Telegraph revealed last weekend, drawing upon research by Camera (the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis), BBC Arabic had to make corrections or clarifications on 215 stories over the course of the war. That’s more than two pieces of information each week over two years found to be biased, inaccurate or misleading.
But the rot runs deeper still. Prescott’s memo quotes Munro praising BBC Arabic’s reporters for delivering “exceptional journalism”, calling them “an unrivalled source of knowledge” for the wider BBC. Remember: among those reporters is Sally Nabil, who, shortly after the horrors of October 7, “liked” a series of posts praising and justifying the massacre, one of them describing it as a “morning of hope”. Evidently lacking the basic journalistic skill of distinguishing combatants from civilians, not only does she remain employed at BBC Arabic, but her reporting on alleged civilian casualties in Beirut following an IDF raid has even been broadcast to British audiences on BBC Breakfast.
Nabil is one of at least six BBC Arabic staff members who have repeatedly posted or liked comments glorifying violence against Israel’s Jewish civilians, yet faced no meaningful consequences even after being publicly exposed. For Munro to hold such individuals up as an “unrivalled source of knowledge” for the rest of the BBC to rely on reveals a worse yet truth about how the corporation now operates. Rather than projecting British values abroad, BBC Arabic is exporting its own contaminated narratives back into the English-language newsroom, having imported them from extremists in the Middle East.
This inversion of purpose directly contradicts the “soft power” doctrine on which the BBC’s foreign language services were founded. Here is at least part of the explanation for why anti-Israel bias has become so deeply entrenched across the corporation. BBC Arabic is not merely failing in its mission; it is actively corroding the editorial standards the entire BBC claims to uphold.
A full parliamentary inquiry – or, failing that, the closure of the Arabic service – may now be the only means left to protect the national broadcaster from being consumed by its own indefensible bias.
David Grom is a Camera Arabic researcher
To get more news, click here to sign up for our free daily newsletter.
