Holding power to account is among journalism’s most important functions. That is why the principle appears in the opening paragraph of the BBC’s Editorial Values. By its nature, it must be applied consistently, without fear or favour. Yet when the institution exercising power is the United Nations – particularly on Israel and the Palestinians – the BBC too often abandons scrutiny for deference.
Historically, the “Fourth Estate” developed as a check on kings, parliaments and governments. Today, however, other institutions also wield enormous influence as they shape international affairs, set media agendas, drive public opinion, define legal categories and present themselves as arbiters of right and wrong. Those institutions, unelected and unregulated, merit at least as much scrutiny as the militaries or governments they often directly influence.
The most obvious example is the United Nations. It shapes international law, diplomacy and humanitarian policy and a single UN report can determine which crises dominate public debate, which claims receive worldwide amplification and which parties are cast as victims or oppressors.
Such power demands rigorous journalistic examination. Yet the BBC frequently reports UN claims as though the organisation were a neutral authority beyond reproach rather than a collection of political bodies, bureaucracies and agencies whose evidence, assumptions and interests must themselves be tested.
Consider the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA.
For almost everyone else displaced by war or disaster, responsibility falls to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR. It assists tens of millions of refugees under a framework intended to ease pressure on host countries, promote self-reliance, expand access to third-country solutions and create conditions for safe and dignified return.
Palestinians, however, are governed by a separate system. UNRWA now registers millions of Palestinian refugees, including descendants of those displaced during the 1948 war and large numbers living under Palestinian administration. Unlike UNHCR, it doesn’t seek long-term solutions through integration in the host country or other means. As UNRWA itself states, it “does not have the mandate for durable solutions, including to return or resettle Palestine Refugees”.
The result is an exceptional structure that perpetuates refugee status across generations rather than resolving it. What began with approximately 750,000 refugees has become a population of millions and this arrangement is not merely humanitarian – it is explicitly political. As a PLO official recently put it: “UNRWA and the issue of Palestinian refugees is a political issue at the heart of the Palestinian cause.”
Palestinians are therefore treated not simply as individuals requiring protection and opportunity, but whose continued refugee status appears to serve as a strategic narrative. This is precisely the kind of system that serious journalism should interrogate. Why does one refugee population remain subject to rules applied to no other? Who benefits politically from this arrangement and does the system alleviate suffering, or institutionalise it? Yet these questions are not part of the BBC’s coverage.
The same lack of scrutiny is evident in reporting on the UN’s general treatment of Israel. Israel is the only country subject to a permanent dedicated agenda item at the UN Human Rights Council. That institutionalised exceptionalism helps portray Israel as uniquely deserving of condemnation and surveillance. The framing then travels from UN chambers into government statements, campaign literature and news reports, with the authority of the United Nations invoked as though it has settled the underlying facts.
Rather than investigating whether the UN’s exceptional scrutiny and condemnation of Israel is justified, the BBC usually simply reproduces it.
Case in point is the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which recently accused Israel of genocide and alleged deliberate attacks on children. These are among the gravest accusations imaginable and yet they were not findings reached by a court after adversarial proceedings, cross-examination and the testing of evidence. They were the conclusions of a commission whose methodology, sources, biases and reasoning required intense examination.
The selective intensity of the UN’s concern should also be examined. Palestinian children become the subject of global campaigns and reports when their deaths can be attributed to Israel. There is no comparable interest and scrutiny regarding Hamas’s recruitment of Palestinian minors or use of human shields. Nor is there any pressure placed on neighbouring Egypt to facilitate the large-scale temporary evacuation of civilians, particularly children, from Gaza.
Meanwhile, children suffering in Sudan, Afghanistan, Haiti and numerous other conflicts struggle to attract anything approaching the same political and media attention. The disparity raises difficult questions about whether Palestinian suffering is sometimes treated less as a humanitarian crisis to be alleviated than as a political weapon to be deployed. Those questions ought to be asked by the BBC.
The failure is especially striking because the BBC routinely presents UN officials as disinterested authorities. UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher’s widely publicised claim concerning “14,000 babies” at risk of imminent death was broadcast on the Today programme, the BBC’s flagship radio news programme. His office later walked back the claim and it was proven to be untrue. However, the BBC continues to treat Fletcher as a source of authority without adequately examining how such a sensational assertion came to be made in the first place.
Likewise, when the BBC covered the UN’s decision to add Israel to a blacklist concerning sexual violence in conflict, it again failed to investigate whether the process might have been politically influenced.
The BBC must ask the same questions of the UN and its agencies as it does of governments and militaries because the UN wields considerable influence over the actions of governments and militaries. When an institution can set international agendas, shape public perception, classify populations and attach the language of international law to contested political claims, the BBC’s duty is to hold it to account – not to repackage its press releases as journalism.
No institution claiming moral authority should be beyond examination by a free and impartial press. Power is not confined to physical coercion but also includes the power to define, classify, legitimise, accuse and persuade. Any institution possessing that power, and particularly one with a record of politicisation, institutional bias and failures of accountability, deserves rigorous journalistic scrutiny – especially from the BBC.
Leah Benoz is UK Media Researcher at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera)
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