From Chayei Sarah to the BBC
The resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness mark a moment of reckoning. Their departure followed revelations that a Panorama documentary had edited a Donald Trump speech in a misleading way, and came amid deepening concern over the BBC’s coverage of Israel and Gaza. Jewish staff have accused the corporation of ignoring pleas for an inquiry into antisemitism, while watchdogs report that the BBC has been forced to issue, on average, two corrections a week on its Gaza reporting since October 7.
At stake is not only journalistic accuracy but moral credibility. The danger is not bias itself – for every human institution is prone to bias – but blindness to it, and the defensiveness that follows when it is exposed. That double failure corrodes public trust and, ultimately, truth itself.
Parashat Chayei Sarah offers a striking mirror to this moment. When Abraham seeks to buy the Cave of Machpelah, Ephron the Hittite speaks with ostentatious generosity: “I give you the field, and I give you the cave… Bury your dead.” Yet when the time comes to act, his tone shifts: “A piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver – what is that between you and me?” His apparent largesse masks self-interest. The Torah exposes the gap between his words and his intentions.
Abraham, by contrast, insists on full transparency: “And Abraham weighed out the silver to Ephron.” He refuses the comfort of appearances. For him, integrity is not image management but truth without editing – the courage to show things as they are.
Later, Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, confronts his own bias. Sent to find a wife for Isaac, he secretly hopes that Isaac will marry his own daughter. Yet when the Divine sign points unmistakably to Rebecca, he bows and blesses G-d. Where Ephron denies bias, Eliezer acknowledges and transcends it.
The BBC’s crisis, then, is not unique to journalism. It is a test for all of us. More than the courage to confess after distorting the truth, true integrity is the discipline to ensure that distortion never enters in the first place. Abraham paid the full price for his field so that no shadow of doubt could cling to the transaction. In an age of selective editing – literal and moral – that remains the full price of honesty.