Nigel Farage said the BBC have got themselves into a “terrible mess” over their reporting of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The licence fee-funded corporation has come under fire for refusing to refer to Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
The GB News presenter said the coverage since Hamas launched its barbaric attacks on Israel earlier this month has done the BBC “simply the most enormous damage”.
Speaking on the channel, the former Ukip leader said: “The BBC have got themselves really into a terrible mess over all of this since October 7. Their true prejudices have come out.
“And John Simpson, regarded as one of the great BBC veterans, even he puts out messages saying it’s not for the BBC to take sides which of course is why they won’t say that Hamas are a terrorist organisation even though they are proscribed by the British Government.
“I think this has done the BBC simply the most enormous damage, though fair to say Sky News are equally in the same boat.
“Our national broadcaster. And actually those three letters ‘BBC’ around the world have represented something quite great about our country over the last century.
“But they are now in very, very serious decline and looking deeply partisan.”
Under its editorial guidelines, the BBC does not use the word “terrorist” but attributes it.
The BBC’s guidance on terrorism tells reporters and editors: “The word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding.
“We should convey to our audience the full consequences of the act by describing what happened.
“We should use words which specifically describe the perpetrator such as ‘bomber’, ‘attacker’, ‘gunman’, ‘kidnapper’, ‘insurgent’ and ‘militant’.
“We should not adopt other people’s language as our own; our responsibility is to remain objective and report in ways that enable our audiences to make their own assessments about who is doing what to whom.”
On Monday, the BBC said it has received complaints about its coverage of the conflict and there have been accusations of bias from both sides.
A statement from the BBC board, after its regular monthly meeting held earlier this week, said: “No one who has watched or listened to harrowing reports over the last 10 days could be left in any doubt about the horror brought about by Hamas’s attack on defenceless civilians in Israel.
“As this war continues, with so many deaths of innocent civilians in both Israel and Gaza, the BBC will no doubt continue to come under scrutiny about the way in which we cover it – that is to be expected and also welcomed. The BBC is listening.
“We believe that our editorial guidelines serve us well, and continue to serve us well in difficult circumstances; we do periodically review them as a matter of course, and when we do so at our next planned review in the spring, we will consult and debate these issues just as we always do.”
