BBC whitewashing Israeli war crimes: Protesters

Protester 01

They are enabling the genocide to continue. They are enabling this horror that we are all traumatized by and living through to continue.

Protester 02

The way the media is portraying what is happening in Gaza is now reflecting the current issues and what they're going through at the moment.

Protester 03

They are complicit in this genocide. They cannot explain clearly what's happening in Gaza.

However, it is not just the BBC's impartiality they're directing their criticism at.

Tim Gopsill, National Union of Journalists

The whole political establishment of Britain is pro-Israeli, and the reason is not because they're pro-Israel it's because they're pro-United States. That's the real reason.

The truth is that the British government does what America says, and the BBC does what the British government says.

There have been numerous demonstrations over the course of the Gaza genocide at this very location, and every time, the demonstrators have demanded accountability from the BBC.

An institution meant to hold power to account, they say, has instead turned into a mouthpiece for it and has capitulated to Israeli pressure.

An egregious example of that, beyond the headlines, the choice of words, and, images, is the decision by the BBC in February this year to pull a rare documentary that showed life inside Gaza due to pressure over its narrator's identity; proof, the demonstrators say, of the BBC's fear of upsetting pro-Israel lobbies.

The BBC faces significant criticism after removing a documentary about Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip from its iPlayer platform.

Protester 04

They use language that is constantly avoiding the facts.

They don't talk about war crimes. They don't use the word war crime or ethnic cleansing or genocide. They avoid it.

They're very, very fearful, I think. It feels like they have the Israeli lobby very heavily on their backs.

As the US, EU, UK bombs fall on Gaza and headlines distort, the protestors are asking who the British media really serve.