A BBC editor is suing a left-wing British columnist over an article claiming the state-run broadcaster is biased in Israel’s favor.
The editor at the network—which is known for its anti-Israel reporting—received death threats over the article, according to documents submitted in the libel claim.
Raffi Berg, who has served as the Middle East editor of the BBC’s website for the last 12 years, filed the suit against Owen Jones over an article headlined “The BBC’s Civil War Over Gaza” and published on the Drop Site News website last year.
The article asserts that BBC staff told Jones that Berg “plays a key role in a wider BBC culture of ‘systematic Israeli propaganda.’”
Jones’s article additionally claimed staff told him that Berg “reshapes everything from headlines, to story text, to images,” and “repeatedly seeks to foreground the Israeli military perspective while stripping away Palestinian humanity.”
Jones, a prominent ally of the former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has been panned for his antisemitism, said he looked forward to “vigorously defending” his reporting.
The BBC has been forced to issue several retractions and apologies for its anti-Israel coverage during the two-year war against Hamas in Gaza.
Last month, the U.K.’s Office of Communications, the country’s broadcasting watchdog, censured the BBC for failing to disclose a Gaza documentary’s Hamas link, calling it “materially misleading.”
