BBC News website coverage of the last Israeli election in September 2019 was relatively limited in comparison to its reporting on previous election campaigns in 2013, 2015 and April 2019.
As Israelis prepare to head to the polls yet again on March 2nd, BBC audiences have seen even less coverage of the run-up to the 2020 election with just three related articles having appeared last December and no additional reporting since then apart from amendments made in late February to a profile of Benny Gantz which the BBC has been recycling since April 2019.
BBC News website kicks off 2020 election reporting
Reviewing BBC coverage of the Likud leadership primary
BBC audiences hence currently have no idea how many (29) or which lists are running in the election and on what platforms. They do not know how many people are entitled to vote or that some of them will have to use special voting facilities for people in isolation due to exposure to the Corona virus. Even a limited-edition ice-cream created especially for the election has failed to rouse the BBC’s interest.
However documentation of the BBC’s coverage of Israeli elections over the past seven years has shown that regardless of which lists are in the running or which issues are at the forefront of voters’ minds, the corporation manages to reduce the story to one narrative.
Back in January 2013 we made the following observations in relation to BBC coverage of that year’s Israeli election:
“Most blatantly obvious is the fact that the BBC’s insistence upon framing this election almost exclusively in terms of the potential effect of its results on ‘the peace process’ reflects its own institutional attitude towards that subject, both in terms of its perceived importance and in terms of the curious notion that only what Israel does has any effect upon that process’ chances.”
Two years later we noted that:
“The most outstanding characteristic of BBC reporting on the 2015 Israeli election from day one was the insistence of its journalists on framing the story from the angle of its effect on negotiations with the Palestinians – despite the fact that other concerns were much higher up on voters’ lists of priorities.”
In April 2019 we commented:
“Overall, the BBC News website’s selective coverage of the 2019 election conformed to the agenda evident in the corporation’s reporting of the two previous ones. Israel was once again portrayed as a country ‘shifting’ to the right and that alleged shift was depicted as the exclusive reason for the predicted failure to make progress in ‘the peace process’.”
And last September we noted that “the BBC’s overriding interest in promoting a political narrative means that it continues to adhere to that well-worn formula”.
There is of course very little reason to anticipate that coverage of the upcoming election will deviate from that long-standing chosen narrative, particularly given that the BBC’s recent framing of the US ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan was overseen by its Middle East editor – who is once again in the region, apparently to cover the election.
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