The BBC should consider further training for staff on how to cover the Israel-Hamas conflict, Penny Mordaunt has suggested.
The leader of the House of Commons, 50, made the comments after a Conservative colleague claimed that “anti-Israel bile and bias is there for all to see” at the BBC.
Discussing the issue at business questions on Thursday, Ms Mordaunt said: “While again they are operationally independent, I hope they will reflect on what has happened over the last few weeks and look at what they can do, whether it is training and what is happening with their editorial teams…to ensure the British public can rely on the fact that they are getting impartial, good advice.”
Her comments come amid criticism of the corporation after The Telegraph revealed that multiple presenters on a BBC radio station have been accused of posting “toxic” and “anti-Israel” content on social media about the ongoing war.
Speaking about the BBC’s coverage of the conflict to Sir Michael Ellis, former attorney general, Ms Mordaunt said: “I think that we all want our national broadcaster to be the best in the world and we want its editorial standards, its policies and those who work for it to be the best in the world.”
War must be ‘presented with highest journalistic standards’
She added that the British people should be getting coverage on the war that “is presented with the highest journalistic standards”.
“The BBC is usually very good at these sorts of things but I think there are questions that I certainly, as a licence fee-payer, would want to be answered in this respect.”
Sir Michael, MP for Northampton North, earlier asked: “Can we have a debate about impartiality at the BBC?
“Surely we cannot have a situation, as described in today’s Daily Telegraph, where BBC presenters use their on-air status to espouse fake news about Israel and make scurrilous suggestions about the Prime Minister’s motivations.
“Today The Telegraph has published a well-researched piece of journalism, having trawled through social media of some BBC journalists and personnel, and the anti-Israel bile and bias is there for all to see.
“What are we going to do about the BBC?”
‘Genuine crisis’ for BBC
It follows evidence that The Telegraph has seen that those working on the BBC’s Asian Network have shared disputed claims to thousands of followers.
One presenter shared an image with the slogan “From the river to the sea”, which has previously been described by Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, as a “staple of anti-Semitic discourse”.
The newspaper analysed a cache of screenshots, shared by a concerned listener, collated since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct 7 that show Asian Network presenters accusing Israel of committing genocide, sharing conspiracy theory videos and encouraging followers to attend pro-Palestinian marches.
Danny Cohen, previously the Director of BBC Television from 2013 to 2015, said yesterday that the “scale of the BBC’s failings on the Israel-Hamas war now constitutes a genuine crisis for our national broadcaster”.
Mr Cohen, who has previously called for an independent review into the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, accused the broadcaster of “a profound system failure” after it was revealed that bosses were alerted to concerns about the social media accounts about three weeks after Hamas’s attacks on Israel.
He said that this “means that senior management is either complicit in anti-Israel bias at the BBC or has lost control of their own staff and the content they produce”.
It comes as the corporation faces mounting pressure about its reporting of the conflict and amid questions on the use of social media by BBC employees.
Under BBC guidelines, staff in “senior leader” positions, as well as those in news, current affairs and factual journalism, have to abide by its strictest rules on impartiality.