Several employees of the UK-based news agency Reuters spoke out in a report released on Thursday about what they see as pro-Israel bias among the company’s editors and management.
Earlier this month, following Israel’s assassination of Palestinian journalist Anas Al Sharif, Reuters published a headline stating, "Israel kills Al Jazeera journalist it says was Hamas leader."
The choice of such a contentious headline stirred controversy, especially since Al Sharif was formerly part of Reuters' Pulitzer Prize-winning team in 2024, the Declassified UK reported.
The headline triggered backlash online and sparked unease among Reuters employees, some of whom have privately voiced concerns about what they describe as a pro-Israel slant in the news agency’s editorial decisions.
Reuters, founded in London in 1851 and now reaching over a billion people daily, faces growing scrutiny from within.
Several current and former Reuters staff, speaking anonymously to Declassified UK, described an editorial culture that downplays Palestinian suffering.
A significant bias
One desk editor resigned in August 2024, stating that their values no longer aligned with the company’s approach to covering Israel’s war in Gaza.
The editor attached a report and an open letter, urging management to adhere to core journalistic principles; however, Reuters’ communications department denies ever receiving them.
However, insiders confirmed to Declassified UK that following Israel’s war on Gaza, a group of Reuters journalists conducted an internal review of nearly 500 Israel-Palestine stories published over five weeks.
Their findings revealed a significant bias, as far more resources and attention were devoted to Israeli perspectives and casualties, despite the far heavier death toll among Palestinians in Gaza.
At that time, over 11,000 Palestinians had been killed, roughly ten times the number of Israeli fatalities.
“A comprehensive internal investigation, conducting both quantitative and qualitative analyses of our reporting”, took place, according to a Reuters source, which told Declassified UK:
“A few weeks after Israel’s war on Gaza, several journalists at Reuters recognised that our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war lacked objectivity.”
The journalists’ internal report also criticised Reuters for avoiding the term “Palestine” and for failing to cover claims by experts that Israel is committing genocide, a charge Reuters has reported more openly when covering Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Despite these criticisms, Reuters has not publicly addressed whether it has accepted any of the internal recommendations.
Some symbolic changes were made in May 2024, allowing reporters to use “genocide” with attribution, yet analysis shows the term remains rarely employed in coverage of the conflict.
Euphemisms
Euphemisms like "war", "campaign", or "assault" dominate, and when genocide is mentioned, Israel’s denials are frequently included, unlike similar denials from Palestinian resistance groups, which are not given equal weight.
Internal style guide updates lean heavily on Israeli perspectives, omitting critical context such as US and Israeli roles in undermining ceasefires, the realities of Israeli settler colonialism, and apartheid conditions in Palestine.
The guide also overlooks Gaza’s status as the deadliest conflict zone for journalists since the US Civil War, Declassified UK reported.
Critics of Western media’s coverage, including former UN human rights lawyer Craig Mokhiber, accuse outlets like Reuters of consciously obscuring the genocide and dehumanising Palestinian victims to shield Israeli perpetrators from accountability.
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy recently lamented the lack of courageous reporting that might have prevented the current military escalation.
A Reuters spokesperson, however, defended the agency’s coverage as “fair and impartial”.
