For decades, the BBC was the parent institution of public service journalism. His credibility was the yardstick; impartiality, a beacon for the media world in a sea of noise. The recent debate over Trump’s manipulated video is just a symptom of a structural problem: the erosion of neutrality, evident especially in the coverage of the conflict in Gaza, where internal activism is beginning to replace the search for factual truth. The BBC case should serve as a mirror for other newsrooms – in Portugal, the diagnosis would perhaps not be very different.
At the heart is the rise of militant thought, relevant today in Western newsrooms. Born of socially legitimate causes—equality, diversity, justice—this thinking has evolved into a prescriptive ideology that defines good and evil, oppressed and oppressed, and demands moral alignment rather than rational scrutiny.
In journalism, this pattern is toxic: it exchanges the duty to ask for the instinct to protect, undervalues doubt, elevates conviction and transforms the reporter into a moral guardian. Thus, impartiality yields to selective empathy and truth to ideological coherence.
In the conflict in Gaza, this moral lens distorts complexity. Israel ceases to be a State analyzed for its actions, becoming a symbol of the Western and capitalist “oppressor”, while Hamas appears clothed in a narrative of resistance. Reality is forced to fit into this framework. We saw this in the initial coverage of the explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital, in Gaza, when the BBC broadcast without verification the Hamas version that pointed to Israel as responsible for “hundreds of deaths”. Days later, the truth contradicted the narrative, but the correction came late and without the same echo. The same pattern was repeated in the operation at Al-Shifa Hospital, reported in an accusatory manner without a solid factual basis.
Another reflection of this ideology is active neutrality: the refusal to classify Hamas as a terrorist group, creating under the pretext of equidistance a false moral balance between terrorist action and state response. Neutrality stops protecting rigor to protect sensibilities.
This transformation results less from organized conspiracies and more from internal culture: the capture of the journalistic space by a generation trained under academic norms of relative truth and subjective morality, where codes of social justice impose themselves on objectivity. The result is emotionally engaged, intellectually impoverished journalism.
At a time when social networks reward speed and virality, the role of newsrooms cannot be that of mere replicators of the immediate. The true value of journalism lies in validating facts, crossing sources and resisting the pressure of the moment. More than collecting information, in a world where the paradigm is excess information and conflicting information, it is necessary to analyze it with objectivity and rigor — only in this way can the journalist become a guardian of veracity and an effective antidote against disinformation and digital propaganda. The future of journalism will depend less and less on access and more and more on analytical intelligence that separates the noise from the facts.
The BBC, a historical symbol of rigor, has become a paradigm of this crisis. By replacing doubt with moral certainty, he lost public trust, and neutrality went from being a virtue to becoming suspect. When newsrooms choose causes, not facts, journalism stops serving truth and serves narratives.
The way back will not be easy. But the profession will only regain relevance by returning to the discipline of fact and the discomfort of doubt. To achieve this, journalism must avoid the temptation to protect itself behind the easy argument that the media in democracies are under attack by groups such as Trumpism or other populisms. The true antidote to the erosion of trust lies not just in denouncing the attack, but in the courage not to give in to reactive polarization. Only the demand for objective analysis, rigorous validation of sources and refusal of immediacy can restore the role of journalism as a guarantee of truth and a counterweight to disinformation.
Journalism should report what happens, not what is expected to happen. Objectivity is not coldness: it is the most courageous form of respect for human complexity. Only in this way will the beacon of truth once again illuminate the sea where the storm reigns today.
Strategy, Security and Defense Analyst