‘Sanitising genocide’: UK media sidelined Palestinian voices during Gaza genocide, study finds
BBC Broadcasting House entrance seen on 10 November 2025
The New Arab reports on 23 April 2026:
The BBC, Guardian and Sky News have repeatedly used language, tone and framing that dehumanises Palestinian casualties, a UK media monitor has said.
By analysing 11,295 excerpts from 686 articles covering the same events across the three news publishers and Al Jazeera, NewsCord said it found that while Al Jazeera showed greater balance in its coverage, the others downplayed Israeli violence through the use of passive voice, obscured language, selective reporting and negative qualifiers.
The report added that the publications also included fewer Palestinian voices and, when they did, devoted a lower word count to them compared with Israeli voices.
“The data in this report is not opinion, it’s the result of a systematic classification of thousands of article excerpts covering the same events, in an attempt to measure overall bias in three years of reporting on this long, bloody genocide,” Nima Akram, NewsCord’s founder, said in a statement.
NewsCord said the BBC led the pattern of passive voice in nearly 80 percent of sentences involving Palestinian casualties, removing Israel’s responsibility, for example, “15 killed as Israel attacks camp” rather than “Israel killed 15 people”.
At the same time, the broadcaster explicitly attributed Israeli attacks only around half the time, with Sky News and the Guardian at 54 percent, compared with Al Jazeera’s 89 percent.