Nearly half of UK media coverage of Muslims found to be biased, major report finds

LONDON (MNTV) – Almost half of all British media coverage of Muslims and Islam published last year contained measurable bias, according to a sweeping new report that examined more than 40,000 articles across 30 of the country’s leading news outlets.

The State of British Media 2025, published on 9 March by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), is the most comprehensive study of its kind. 

Analysing 40,913 articles, it found that 45.5% were classified as either “Biased” or “Very Biased” — with researchers warning that audiences are being “routinely denied balanced and accurate information on matters of significant social importance.”

The scale of the problem is matched by its concentration. Just three outlets — The Telegraph, the Daily Mail and GB News — were responsible for nearly half (46.8%) of all “Very Biased” content, despite accounting for only 22.5% of total coverage reviewed.

The Spectator emerged as the most disproportionately biased publication in the study. More than one in four of its articles — 26.3% — were rated in the most severe category, a rate the report notes is 29 times higher than the BBC’s. 

Its overall negative coverage rate stood at 93%, with more than half of its biased output featuring sweeping generalisations about Muslims as a group.

GB News, despite being a relatively recent entrant to the U.K. media landscape, ranked among the worst performers across all five bias categories. Nearly one in six of its articles reached the “Very Biased” threshold — a finding the report describes as evidence of “systematic hostility towards Islam and Muslims as a core feature of its editorial identity.”

The Telegraph, meanwhile, produced the highest raw volume of severely biased articles — 391 in total — and was identified as the single most impactful outlet when volume and proportion were weighed together.

Across all 40,913 articles assessed, 70% associated Muslims or Islam with negative aspects or behaviours. 

Contextual omission — the failure to provide adequate background or diverse perspectives — was the most widespread failing, present in 44% of biased articles. 

Troublingly, this particular problem was not confined to right-wing outlets: The Guardian’s biased articles omitted context in 51% of cases, and The Independent in 44%.

Generalisation, by contrast, was identified as an almost exclusively right-wing practice. GB News included sweeping characterisations of Muslims in 39% of its biased articles, followed by The Telegraph (32%), the Daily Express (24%) and The Times (22%). The BBC recorded just 6%.

The BBC was the strongest overall performer, with a “Very Biased” rate of just 0.9% across 3,244 articles. ITV (0.5%), Metro (0.8%) and the Press Association (0.9%) also performed well. Prospect Magazine recorded zero “Very Biased” articles entirely.

The report’s authors argue that the disparity between outlets proves the failures are not inevitable. “When British media covers Muslims in the contexts of sports, entertainment, health, or everyday life, bias rates plummet significantly,” the report states. 

“Yet when the same outlets cover Muslims in relation to politics, terrorism, or immigration, bias rates soar.”

Writing in his conclusion, CfMM director Faisal Hanif said the findings pointed not to individual lapses but to deep structural failures.

 “When media coverage systematically associates Muslims with threat and conflict while stripping away context and substituting generalisation for nuance, it creates the conditions for discriminatory policies to gain public support, for hate crimes to be rationalised, and for millions of British Muslims to be regarded with suspicion in their own country.”

The report called on editors to include more Muslim voices in coverage, eliminate collective attribution, and adopt stricter internal guidelines on framing and headline writing. Britain’s Muslim population is estimated at over four million people.