It was a terrible year for the British Broadcasting Corporation, which still has such an overhyped global reputation as the gold standard for media. Several websites tagged the BBC as the worst outlet in 2025, and it wasn't really about its mangling of Donald Trump's January 6, 2021 speech that caused Trump to file a defamation lawsuit.
It was about the BBC's horribly biased coverage of Israel and Gaza. Brittany Bernstein of National Review put the BBC at the top of their list of "Worst Media Misses of 2025." The pro-Israel media watchdog Honest Reporting tagged the BBC as the "Dishonest Reporter of the Year." And the dishonesty started early.
Both NR and Honest Reporting noted that in February, BBC executives pulled its documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone after an investigative journalist found the film’s narrator Abdullah — “the emotional centerpiece of the film” — was the teenage son of a Hamas minister. Oops. And his mother had been paid by the production company responsible for the program.
Then came the subtitling. A closer review revealed that where Gazan interviewees spoke of “Jews” and pledged to fight “jihad,” BBC editors thoughtfully translated this into the more palatable “Israelis” and the soothingly vague “resistance,” presumably on the grounds that British viewers might find murderous Jew-hatred and holy war a touch less sympathetic.
In May, UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher was invited on BBC Radio and proclaimed that “14,000 babies could die in Gaza within 48 hours.” Nothing like that happened. Naturally, the BBC host he offered minimal pushback. Many networks overhyped child famine, just as Hamas dictated.
In June, the biased "Beeb" was forced to apologize for failing to cut a live broadcast of the iconic Glastonbury music festival when a pop-punk duo called Bob Vylan began gleefully chanting “Death, death to the IDF.” It included Vylan’s open call for violence: “We are not pacifist punks here over at Bob Vylan Enterprises. We are the violent punks, because sometimes, you have to get your message across with violence – because that is the only language some people speak.” Conservative Party chair Kemi Badenoch called the performance “grotesque.”
In November, the London Telegraph published their expose of the BBC's mangling of Trump's January 6 speech, and then published another story the next day headlined "BBC’s bias ‘pushed Hamas lies around the world’."
We asked Honest Reporting Executive Director Gil Hoffman why at this late date, the BBC is still so honored as if it were the most trustworthy news outlet. Was it the public funding? Hoffman told NewsBusters: "Rather than give it a halo, being taxpayer-funded should have made the BBC more responsible, objective and professional. Despite being a non-profit, the BBC is still after revenue and for that, they have to be provocative. “
Hoffman was bothered that the big dent in the BBC’s reputation seems to be more about the Trump bungling, which caused the resignations of two BBC bosses. “The BBC heads should have lost their jobs and the BBC's image should have taken a hit a long ago due to its horribly biased coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict since well before the massacre on October 7, 2023, but even more so for the British broadcaster’s reporting of the war.”
The BBC bosses resigned while trying to claim that there's no reason to disbelieve the BBC product. American lefties like Brian Stelter preposterously lamented the BBC “exists in an incredibly politically charged environment, even as it tries to be apolitical and impartial.” They're political and partial, and you can't described them as "Facts First."
Hoffman doesn't see how BBC's new bosses are improving anything: "I have yet to see a serious effort by its new leadership to become impartial on the Israel issue. It's long overdue."
Other Honest Reporting "winners" who have "excelled in promoting warped versions of the truth" included:
- Primetime (Non)Apology Award: Christiane Amanpour
- Sponsored by Qatar Award: Tucker Carlson
- Al Jazeera Defender Award: Sky News
- Podcaster of the Year Award: Myron Gaines, Fresh & Fit
- Gaslighter of the Year: Ms. Rachel & Zohran Mamdani
- ‘You Escaped the Asylum!’ Award: Candace Owens
- All of the Above Award: New York Times
