BBC too left wing? Really?
JVL Introduction
Read below Jonathan Cook’s merciless dismantling of the BBC’s current crisis. He calls it “just the latest, particularly damaging skirmish in a years-long battle by the right to bring down the BBC – while, in the meantime, ensuring that the corporation turns even more pliant than it already is in promoting the right’s interests.”
The Campaign for Media Monitoring expressed it succinctly:
The BBC’s Director General and News CEO have been pressured to resign over the wrong scandal: a Trump documentary edit —no doubt a sloppy misstep — that pales against the Corporation’s systematic failure to report Israel’s war on Gaza with impartiality. Powerful interests secured these resignations, whilst Palestinians enduring genocide remain unheard, their suffering marginalised by BBC editorial choices.”
The dramatic resignations and Donald Trump’s threat to bankrupt the corporation with a multi-billion dollar defamation suit have prompted a Save the BBC petition and a blizzard of commentary, including from some surprising quarters.
John Ware, responsible for the infamous Panorama documentary Is Labour Antisemitic? leapt to the defence of the programme makers in the current case, accusing their detractors of being “grossly hypocritical”. Their editing had not materially misled anyone about Trump, Ware opined, although he would have been happy to see BBC heads rolls over much of its Gaza coverage (so would we, but for different reasons!).
Another writer who raised eyebrows with his insistence that “The current right-wing attack should be resisted by all-comers” was Denis Macshane, arch-proponent of the “new antisemitism” weaponised with such devastating effect in defence of the apartheid state of Israel. Macshane offers proof that “The accusation that the BBC is left-wing is laughable” and goes so far as to state: “On Gaza, I seem to have heard more Israel government spokespersons on the Today programme than I knew existed.”
Independent journalist Richard Sanders, who has a fine track record for holding the BBC to account over its pro-Zionist coverage, pointed out that it was Ware’s documentary in 2019 attacking Jeremy Corbyn that should have rung alarm bells about BBC bias. Aaron Bastani of NovaraMedia called it “the most shocking journalism I’ve seen from the BBC.” There was no establishment hue and cry about that. Cook’s analysis deals with this and also a Panorama documentary in 2010 about Israel’s deadly assault on the Gaza aid ship Mavi Marmara.
Byline Times exposed one particular aspect of the story ignored by mainstream media in an article titled ‘BBC Bias’ Memo Was Authored by Lobbyist Tied to Pro-Trump Tech Giants.
Daniel Trilling sets the whole fiasco in the context of the reaction of Western elites to the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023.
Essentially what we are seeing is the BBC collapsing in the face of attacks from people who want to replace public service broadcasting (however flawed) with a coterie of GB News clones. This possibility has to be resisted if organisations like CfMM, whose meticulous work exposes how little traction marginalised or dissenting groups have in society, are to be granted anything like a fair hearing.
NWI
This article was originally published by Jonathan Cook's Substack on Wed 12 Nov 2025. Read the original here.
BBC news has a long record of disinformation. But this time it chose the wrong target
The BBC’s now in a death loop: it grows ever more craven to the billionaires, shifting the political centre of gravity further rightwards, even as the billionaire-owned media claim it’s too ‘leftwing’
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Quite aside from the BBC’s anti Corbybn/Labour documentaries and continuously misinformed coverage of Labour’s “antisemitism” (including ambush-interviews to ask him to apologise for Labour’s ‘Jew hate’ rather than any policies):
During the Election period, the BBC (along with every other Media aside from the Scotsman and Daily MIrror) never told the public what Labour’s policies actually were.
More egregious was that, also in the run-up to the election, any article about Antisemitism on the BBC’s websites had a link to the ‘very helpful’ BBC web–page: “What is antisemitism?”.
This page laid out the IHRA definition of ‘Antisemitism’ as ‘Critical of Isrtael’ and made it abundantly clear that, yes, Labour WAS an Antisemitic oprganisation. It also perpetuated the canard about the Mear One mural: ‘Freedom for Humanity’ (actually an anti-corporate graphic – hence the massive Dollar/Masonic symbol dominating the entire image).
For those not sure how serious this accusation was – there was a lot of red text.
This was a very easy-to-access page which must have ‘informed’ many people who were at that time concerned at the allegations and wanted guidance.
The BBC could not have worked harder to lose labour the election of 2019 but, since the Forde Report, there has been no apology from the BBC for their actions – and no actual coverage (aside from the most glancing reference) to the Forde Report itself.
Somewhere there must be a record of this ‘Labour=Antismitism” web-page. I’d love to see it reproduced now.
Thank you for your wonderful work!
A very well written article. Giving a full context and how the BBC got into this position but also explaining how it has been the “left” and not the “right” that has suffered from its poor journalism. Thank you
It is of course highly horrific.
As said, the BBC Panorama show about ‘antisemitism in the Labour Party’ was fundamentally biased, essentially untrue. It was as intended, no mistake.