The evidence suggests that the BBC’s reporting on the Syrian conflict is biased

The BBC’s reporting of the Syrian conflict has long yielded protests and complaints from members of the British Syrian community that it is biased in favour of the Assad regime. Such protests have primarily centred on the alleged under-representation of the Assad regime’s crimes in reports as compared to those committed by other parties to the conflict. Our experiences at Rethink Rebuild Society, a UK-based Syrian advocacy and community organisation, have reinforced these concerns, most particularly with respect to a May 2016 BBC Newsnight report on East Aleppo, which sidelined the regime’s besiegement of the city, and instead characterised it as being “once a major stronghold of terrorists”, effectively implying that the siege was imposed by Daesh rather than by Assad’s forces. Newsnight subsequently issued an apology for this report, although the process caused immense damage amongst British Syrians.

In response to such numerous and long-standing frustrations, we analysed 309 BBC Online articles on the Syrian conflict published between September and December 2016 (corresponding with the Aleppo tragedy). We sought to determine: 1) How attack perpetrators are identified within article headlines; 2) where attack perpetrators are identified within the article texts; and 3) how Assad’s name is used within article headlines.

We published our results in a report released on Tuesday and titled “Altering the Trends: The BBC’s Biased Reporting on the Syrian Conflict”. They confirm that the British Syrian community’s concerns over the BBC’s reporting of the Syrian conflict are well-founded.

Of the 309 articles that we analysed, 61 reported specific attacks or crimes; 38 of these were committed by the Assad regime and/or its Russian allies. However, the BBC identified Assad/Russia as the perpetrators in only 4 of these article headlines (just 11 per cent of the time).

In contrast, Daesh was identified in 100 per cent of the article headlines detailing attacks which it committed (in nine of nine articles); opposition fighters were identified in 80 per cent of article headlines detailing attacks committed by them (in four of five articles); and the US-led Coalition forces were identified in 100 per cent of article headlines detailing attacks committed by them (in four of four articles).

Not only were Assad/Russia largely unidentified as attack perpetrators within article headlines, but they were also unidentified or only vaguely identified within the text of many of the articles themselves. Eight articles, for example, neglected to mention Assad/Russia at all as the attack perpetrators. An additional thirteen articles identified their involvement well into the article text, namely in paragraphs 3-12 or in the video clips accompanying the articles. This means that only seventeen (out of a total of 38) articles prominently identified Assad/Russia’s involvement within the article headlines or within paragraphs 1-2 of the article text.

Also shocking was our examination of the eight articles which specifically cited Assad’s name within the headlines. His name was never connected to any attacks or criminal activity, but rather, in some of these headlines, he was depicted as a benevolent figure (e.g. Syria war: Assad officials offer Aleppo rebels football match) or as a “victim” of Western “imperialism” (e.g. Assad: Coalition attack on Syria troops ‘intentional’).

Although our report findings do not dispute the factual basis of the BBC’s reporting on Syria, they do raise pressing concerns regarding the messages imparted upon readers which minimise the overwhelming responsibility borne by the Assad regime and its allies in the conflict. The BBC’s news coverage, therefore, has the potential to distort the public’s understanding of the dynamics of the conflict in Syria and consequently to misdirect public opinion and public pressure regarding the role that Western governments – and Britain, in particular – should adopt.

A crucial element of fair, impartial and objective reporting on Syria (or any other conflict, for that matter) is that relevant actors are identified clearly within news reports. Failure to do so leaves people’s internal biases to fill in the blanks, perhaps with false information, which will only serve to perpetuate existing misconceptions on the Syrian conflict. Indeed, as stated by former East Aleppo resident, English teacher and activist Abdulkafi Alhamdo, “The argument that people will know who is bombing civilians is not correct, because many people don’t. The BBC’s failure to mention the doer in most of the report headlines contributes to deluding the audience about the truth.”

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.