Al-Jazeera English and BBC News coverage of the Gaza War 2008-9: A comparative examination

This research comparatively examines BBC News and Al-Jazeera English’s (AJE) reporting of the 22-day Gaza War of 2008/9 (‘Operation Cast Lead’) and the production factors shaping their coverage. The research combined a content analysis of AJE and BBC news coverage, including thematic, textual and sourcing aspects, as well as interviews with AJE and BBC journalists. The findings show that Israeli sources, themes and framings dominated the BBC’s broadcast and online coverage across all thematic areas, including historical contextualisation, world reactions, protests, the humanitarian impact, legality, and military developments, whereas Israeli and Palestinian sources and perspectives received equivalent levels of coverage on AJE. Key elements of historical, political, and legal contextualisation, notably Israel’s blockade of Gaza and the humanitarian crisis, were extensively reported on AJE but were largely absent from BBC coverage. Overall, the BBC adopted ‘Operational’ and ‘War on Terror’ framings of the conflict, which centred Israeli aims and objectives, while AJE adopted ‘Attack on Gaza’ and ‘Resistance’ framings, broadly echoing the Palestinian narrative. Key production factors revealed by the interviews include Israel’s public relations superiority, its media access restrictions, and AJE’s extensive presence in Gaza. The findings also highlight significant differences in journalistic self-conceptions. Although AJE and BBC journalists both endorsed journalistic values such as ‘objectivity’, ‘balance’ and ‘presenting all sides’, they disagreed on how these should be interpreted and deployed in practice. While BBC interviewees articulated journalistic roles and ideals through a strictly professional or regulatory lens, AJE journalists explicitly placed them within a broader moral and political outlook. The findings show this translated into markedly different editorial choices: Overall, the BBC’s ‘decontextualised balance’ approach often disadvantaged the Palestinian perspective by under-reporting Palestinian rationales and deprioritising contextualisation, whereas AJE‘s ‘morally informed objectivity’ resulted in coverage which centred the humanitarian dimension and was explicitly sceptical of official Israeli narratives