We invited the political columnist and author Stephen Pollard, a critic of BBC reporting of the current Middle East conflict, to provide evidence of the bias he alleges. We also offered the BBC equal space to reply, but the corporation chose to confine itself to a short, general rebuttal.

Allegations of bias are notoriously difficult to prove. But you can get a general idea that something is amiss when the organisation which stands accused responds that it has had an equal number of complaints from both sides, and that this somehow proves that it has got the balance right. All it means is that it has had an equal number of complaints. And that has nothing to do with the merits of an argument.

The key allegation against the BBC’s coverage of the current conflict in Lebanon is not that it is acting as a propaganda arm for Hezbollah, although if one was only to watch the BBC’s coverage one would have a wholly distorted impression of events. Not a day goes by without reference to the Lebanese refugees, for instance. Their plight is indeed terrible. But what of the 300,000 Israeli refugees, driven from their homes by Hezbollah terror attacks? The BBC does not consider their plight worth reporting.

The central problem with the BBC’s coverage is that, for all the fair and accurate reporting which the BBC carries, there are two regular and systematic forms of bias against Israel. First, editorialising masked as reporting, which usually begins with the assumption that Israeli action is ‘disproportionate’ and which gives free and uncritical rein to the allegation that the IDF is guilty of war crimes. And second, unbalanced reports or programmes.

Take the 23rd July edition of what the BBC describes as its ‘flagship political programme’, Sunday AM with Andrew Marr. There were four guests, all known for their hostility to Israel: Glenys Kinnock, Matthew Parris, Nayla Mouawad and Sir Menzies Campbell. All were simply invited by Andrew Marr to offer their thoughts. Not one guest was invited on who might have acknowledged that there is another view.

From the very first day it was obvious how the BBC would treat the conflict, when a film on Newsnight concluded with the reporter, Peter Marshall, remarking across a picture of a blown-up bridge: “All this destruction. And still more threatened” — as if it was a given that the IDF was on a wilful mission of destruction.

On Sunday, BBC1’s 10’o’clock News’ coverage of the destruction of Hezbollah’s launch sites in Kana treated the IDF’s film of rockets being launched from the bombed building as an irrelevance, and allowed the Security Minister, Isaac Herzog, just two sentences to put Israel’s case – the only element in the entire bulletin which did not portray the IDF as guilty of wilfully murdering civilians.

Most egregiously, the comments of the UN emergency relief co-ordinator after one air raid were seriously distorted. He was shown remarking that the scale of what he called the indiscriminate destruction made it a violation of humanitarian law by the Israelis. But what was not reported was the rest of his message: that he did not, however, know what or who might have been standing between the residential buildings at the time of the Israeli attack. And when, the following day, he said that Hezbollah had been culpable for "cowardly blending in among women and children" his words went unreported on BBC TV or radio, and were mentioned only in the 21st and 22nd paragraphs of a 24 paragraph internet report.

When the BBC allows its correspondents to editorialise, they reveal the bias behind the supposed objective reporting. A From Our Own Correspondent piece by Nick Thorpe on Radio 4, also published on the BBC website, is typical, full of prejudice against Israel: "The Kassams mostly needle the Israelis, like pinpricks in the ankles of a giant, taunting him to stamp back with his big, US-issue army boots. The Katyushas are like poisoned arrows. They drive him mad." Nowhere does he mention that a third of the ‘giant’s population is being attacked by the ‘pinprick’ rockets of an organisation committed to murdering Jews and destroying Israel. “Every day”, he tells us, Israel seizes more Palestinian land – this less than a year after Israel pulled out of Gaza, an act which has led to nothing but further terror attacks on Israel.

If the BBC was a private institution, such as the Guardian or Independent, its bias would be the business only of those who bought it. But we are all forced, under threat of imprisonment, to pay for the BBC’s news service. That is why we all have a right to expect it to be fair in its coverage.

The BBC's response:

Individual with string opinions will sometimes detect bias when it does not exist. The BBC’s duty is to provide independent reporting and analysis of all perspectives of a story, so our audiences can make sense of what’s going on in the world. Stephen Pollard represents one side of the debate, but we have to strike a balance between all sides. We think it’s also worth noting that the recent independent panel set up by the (BBC) Board of Governors found no deliberate or systematic bias in the BBC;s coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.