[2] Controversies continued with the likes of the Nationwide general election special with Thatcher in 1983, a Panorama documentary called Maggie's Militant Tendency, the Real Lives interview with Martin McGuinness, the BBC's coverage of the US 1986 Bombing of Libya and the Zircon affair.
Giving as examples Andrew Neil, Nick Robinson, Robbie Gibb and Guto Harri he wrote that the rightwing backgrounds of "various prominent BBC employees have been curiously unexamined in the row over "bias" ".
[19][20] Some commentators, such as Peter Oborne, have argued that there is a culture of "client journalism" which has flourished in recent years due to a closeness between the BBC and the ruling Conservative Party, which has led to their bias in favour of the establishment.
He concludes that the BBC's efforts to reinforce stereotypes of South Asians has been directly responsible for damaging the image of India and encouraging racist incidents against Indians, such as the Leipzig University internship controversy.
[92] A 2016 report from the BBC accused India of funding Pakistan's Muttahida Qaumi Movement and providing weapons and training to its militants, citing the statements of various Pakistani sources, including officials and a senior Karachi police officer.
On 10 October 2006, The Daily Telegraph[106] claimed, "The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers' money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.
Chaired by the British Board of Film Classification president, Sir Quentin Thomas, the committee found that "apart from individual lapses, there was little to suggest deliberate or systematic bias" in the BBC's reporting of the Middle East.
[111] Martin Walker, then the editor of United Press International, agreed that the report implied favouritism towards Israel but said that the suggestion "produced mocking guffaws in my newsroom" and went on to list a number of episodes of what he thought was the BBC's clear pro-Palestinian bias.
[116] The Daily Telegraph has criticised the BBC for its coverage of the Middle East; in 2007, it wrote, "In its international and domestic news reporting, the corporation has consistently come across as naïve and partial, rather than sensitive and unbiased.
[122] On 7 March 2008, the news anchor Geeta Guru-Murthy clarified significant errors in the BBC's coverage of the Mercaz HaRav massacre that had been exposed by media monitor Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
The BBC documentary concluded that Israeli forces had faced a violent premeditated attack by a group of hardcore activists, who intended to orchestrate a political act to put pressure on Israel.
[136] A BBC Editorial Standards Findings issued in July 2011 found that a broadcast on Today on 27 September 2010 that stated, "At midnight last night, the moratorium on Israelis building new settlements in the West Bank came to an end.
It had lasted for ten months" and had breached the accuracy guideline in respect of the requirement to present output "in clear, precise language", as in fact the moratorium on building new settlements had been in existence since the early 1990s and remained in place.
In 2014, an op-ed in The Jerusalem Post by Raphael Cohen-Almagor criticised BBC for avoiding the word "terrorism" in connection with violent acts or groups of people considered by various governments or intergovernmental organisations to be terrorists.
[149] During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, current and former British government ministers, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and four of Britain's most prominent lawyers criticised the BBC for describing Hamas as "militants" and "fighters" and not "terrorists" in its coverage of the conflict.
[170][171] The BBC's chairman and its director general resigned after the inquiry, and Vice-chairman Lord Ryder made a public apology to the government, which the Liberal Democrat Norman Baker MP described as "of such capitulation that I wanted to throw up when I heard it".
[176][177] In April 2007, Webb presented a three-part series for BBC Radio 4, Death to America: Anti Americanism Examined, in which he challenged a common perception of the United States as an international bully and a modern imperial power.
[187] On the Monday after the broadcast, which was watched by some two million viewers, The Times announced that BBC executives had received death threats after their addresses and telephone numbers had been posted on the Christian Voice website.
[192][193][194] Hindu and Sikh leaders in the United Kingdom have accused the BBC of pandering to Britain's Muslim community by making a disproportionate number of programmes on Islam at the expense of covering other Asian religions,[195] such as Sikhism and Hinduism.
Although admitting that the BBC had "got it wrong", the organisation's Head of Newsgathering, Fran Unsworth, largely rejected the suggestion that Donald's race played a part in the lack of reportage, instead claiming it was mostly a product of "Scottish blindness".
[206] On 15 July 2004, the BBC broadcast a documentary The Secret Agent, on the far-right British National Party where undercover reporter Jason Gwynne infiltrated the BNP by posing as a football hooligan.
[246] In light of such criticism in terms of both news and general programming and in recognition of its mandate to represent the entire UK and to encourage creativity throughout the country, active efforts have been made by the Trust and Board of Governors to correct the regional imbalance.
The BBC Trust and Future for Public Service Television Inquiry recognised that it requires more clarity in UK-wide news programming (for example, by explaining that the Junior Doctors Strike affected only England or that Scotland and Northern Ireland are exempt from the bedroom tax and the funding changes leading to the 2010 student protests), and it creates an additional responsibility for the home nations to report on devolved matters.
The newspaper believed the arrangement to be also a breach of the BBC's guidelines and asserted that Dugdale is "a member of Scottish Labour's Truth Team – set up to monitor all SNP and Yes Scotland interviews, press statements and briefing papers" in the runup to the September vote.
[281] Eleven days before the tournament took place, the BBC's current affairs programme Panorama, entitled Euro 2012: Stadiums of Hate, included recent footage of supporters chanting various racist slogans and displays of white power symbols and banners in Poland and Nazi salutes and the beating of South Asians in Ukraine.
Critics included the British media, anti-racism campaigners, and black and Jewish community leaders in Poland, Polish and Ukrainian politicians and journalists, England fans visiting the host nations and footballers (Gary Lineker, Roy Hodgson and others).
[292][293] In response, the BBC was targeted by "Chinese trolls and fake news websites", which cybersecurity company Recorded Future says are "likely state-sponsored", claiming the broadcaster had applied "a gloomy or 'underworld' filter" to the imagery in its reports to make the country look "dull and lifeless".
Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman argued that its correspondents "travel the globe to tell the audience of the dangers of climate change while leaving a vapour trail which will make the problem even worse".
Jones found there was sometimes an "over-rigid" application of the editorial guidelines on impartiality in relation to science coverage, which failed to take into account what he regarded as the "non-contentious" nature of some stories and the need to avoid giving "undue attention to marginal opinion".
[305] On 19 October 2011, the Liberal Democrats' culture spokesman, Don Foster, criticised the large number of BBC staff members who attended the eviction of Travellers and their supporters from the illegal section of the Dale Farm site.