The BBC this week came in for fierce criticism for its coverage of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.

So much so that this weekend a protest is being held in front of the BBC Media City offices in Manchester. Interest in the event has proved popular.

It follows another protest at the London office last week. Although it must be mentioned that the Media City event was organised separately.

The aim of the protest is the same though – to put pressure on the BBC to report the crisis as they would any other.

The main focus of the discontent seems to be that the coverage tends to want to give more attention to how Israeli’s are being affected than by the murder being inflicted on the Palestinians.

The BBC prides itself on fairness and equality but this week’s reports have been far from ‘fair’.

There has been constant reminder that Israel is targeting ‘militants’. Military operations that end-up killing families and children are the fault of these militants.

When incidents of apparent murder do occur these are simply said to be ‘mistakes’.

Each and every accusation against the Israeli government has been backed up by a measured and choreographed response from a government official.

Reports of any Palestinian murders are always linked to ‘this never ending cycle of violence’ that has gripped the region.

In the past 24 hours a family of eight have been killed in an airstrike in Gaza and two people were murdered after they were watching last night’s World Cup semi final on the beach.

There seems to be an effort to report them but make sure they don’t make the lead stories for far too long. A simple and effective way to bury the story is to give it as least amount of coverage as possible.

Whilst criticism has been set aside for the BBC other news mediums have been just as guilty.

Some newspapers are simply ignoring the whole story altogether. It didn’t happen or if it did it was swept in to the middle of the publication.

A leading news agency today continued to label pictures on its news feeds as ‘Teenagers’. In an apparent attempt to ensure we don’t forget why this whole episode began.

These were pictures of the Gaza rubble and the aftermath of Israeli air strike.

There is no conspiracy as such in the media. But there is a real lack of responsibility to report the news in a fair and balanced manner.

But does any of this really surprise anyone? Elements of the mainstream British media have for many years aimed to side with the general government foreign policies of the day.

To go against it seems almost ‘unpatriotic’. There has always been an inherent agenda to report particular news items in a specific manner.

And I’m sorry to say that is not about to change any time soon.