Balance and impartiality in public service news: The BBC’s news framing of the 2023 Israel–Gaza war

This study analyses how the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) framed and sourced news during the first three weeks of the 2023 Israel–Gaza war (7–28 October 2023), utilizing a framing approach to assess impartiality. Building on quantitative content analyses, it compares twenty cross-party and party-specific frames, as well as variations in the utilization of sources in the BBC’s ‘Israel–Gaza war’ section. The analyses reveal minimal disparities in the use of cross-party positive frames between the Palestinian and Israeli sides, with the human-interest frame being the most prevalent. However, the use of cross-party negative frames was partial to Israel, with a substantially higher frequency of criminality and terrorism frames in Palestinian narratives, despite some references to Israel’s violations. Party-specific frames favouring Israel were markedly more prominent than those favouring Palestine, while Palestinian concerns were marginalized. The BBC cited Israeli political and citizen sources more frequently than Palestinian sources, whereas Palestinian medical sources were cited more often than Israeli ones.