This is an expanded version of my complaint to Radio 4. You can’t say everything you need to in 2000 characters.

The way that I feel about your coverage this evening is summarised in a letter I wrote to the Observer last week,

In the last two decades the casualty rate from the conflict in Israel Palestine has been twenty Palestinians killed for every Israeli. Given that the suffering on the Palestinian side is so much higher, it is therefore strange that your editorial finds calls for violence  from Israel “understandable”, while considering that violent actions from Palestinians “defy comprehension”. 

Perhaps you should write another editorial explaining the asymmetry of your empathy. 

They didn’t publish it.

Like them, your bias comes out in two main ways.

The tone in which you say things and the presumption you have about who can be trusted. As if Rishi Sunak, the US administration and MI6 don’t have gigantic axes to grind and have never knowingly misled anyone for political purposes.

What you cover.

• This evening you relegated Palestinian suffering to its customary background level of attention and concern – something to be taken for granted, like wallpaper, like all Global South deaths.
• You broadcast an item that argued for the Police to suppress people on a small Hizb ut Tahrir demo on Saturday shouting “jihad” on the basis that this could be interpreted as threatening, while managing to falsely imply that this was the character of the main, massive and diverse PSC ceasefire demonstration on the same day – which actually included Jewish people and organisations – and without reflecting for a moment that taking the flag of a country that is imposing collective punishment on 2.3 million people, and has killed over 5,000 of them in the past week, and flying it on public buildings might also be offensive and threatening to many people in this country, and is opposed by most of us.
• you followed up with a report on the IDF press conference on Hamas atrocities on October 7th,
• then followed that up with an individual story of what happened to one family on Oct 7th.
• Then you repeated the Prime Minster’s endorsement of the Israeli claim that the attack on the hospital last week was from a misfired rocket from Islamic Jihad (rockets that have never managed to kill even a handful of people when they have got through to Israel but in this case managed to kill over 400 somehow) without reflecting either the serious debunking the Israeli claims have had, nor noting the other 5 hospitals the IDF have hit, nor the Church that runs the hospital stating that the IDF have warned them twice, nor the Israeli- US rejection of calls for an independent investigation (which is always a bit of a give away).
• mentioned that 20 lorries have been allowed into Gaza with humanitarian aid, without noting that this is 480 short of the normal daily total after two weeks of a total siege
• then repeated the rocket claim from our ever trustworthy intelligence agencies (who have never been known to be economical with the truth) just in case anyone missed it the first time.

All of this is designed to build up empathy for one side over the other in a way that reflects the agenda of the IDF, which is to generate compliance for its current and future operations in Gaza.

These have already killed three times as many as died on Oct 7th and will kill many many more if there isn’t a ceasefire; something the overwhelming majority of people in this country support (76% according to a YouGov poll last week).

When you cover an individual story it generates an emotional bond with the people being covered. If you primarily cover one side in this way, it indicates that this is deliberate.

Here’s a suggestion. To be properly balanced and properly to match the current ratio of death and suffering, for every individual story you cover from the Israeli side, you should cover three from the Palestinian side, and keep adding to the ratio as the death toll goes up. As it will. A process that coverage like yours is now enabling.