Is it Julie Etchingham that has the anti-Palestinian agenda, or is it her bosses?

When ITV and the BBC first announced that they intended to rig the only genuine leaders' debates of the campaign by totally excluding all but two parties, one of the concerns that was raised was that this would prevent proper scrutiny on the issue of Gaza, because the two hand-picked parties were largely in lockstep.  Rishi Sunak had told Benjamin Netanyahu, now wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, that "we want you to win", while Keir Starmer had infamously said "Israel does have the right" to cut off food, water and electricity to the people of Gaza - precisely one of the war crimes Netanyahu faces prosecution for.

Nevertheless, the issue of Gaza did sneak into the ITV debate last week thanks to an audience member asking a question on it.  But then something odd happened. Before either Sunak or Starmer could answer, the ITV moderator Julie Etchingham effectively froze the debate so that she could 'explain' the question. That effectively entailed her reframing the question and turning it into a radically different question that was about the "Hamas terrorist atrocities of October 7th", when it was perfectly clear from his wording that the questioner was primarily asking about Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza.

But that was as nothing compared to the oddity of Etchingham's behaviour on last night's ITV debate between leading figures (ie. not necessarily leaders) of the seven largest parties, a format that should have belatedly allowed scrutiny of Labour and the Tories on Gaza.  Each paticipant was allowed to select one other participant to ask a question to, and until the SNP's Stephen Flynn was called, they were always allowed to ask a follow-up question after they heard the answer.  But because Flynn's question to Angela Rayner was about whether Labour would stop arms sales to Israel, Etchingham didn't allow him a follow-up. Instead she launched into yet another weird monologue "thanking" Flynn for his "important" question, which she decided for him had actually been about the terrorist atrocities of Hamas and Israel's "military operation" thereafter (apparently only Hamas can commit atrocities, and when Israel do it, the carnage takes the form of a much more orderly "military operation").  As thrilled as Flynn must have been with the thanks, he probably would have preferred that the extensive time taken up by the thanks had instead been used to give him the follow-up question he was entitled to.  He might, of course, have used that question to introduce words like "genocide" and "collective punishment" into the debate, which a cynic might suspect is the reason Etchingham didn't allow him to ask it.

Is it Etchingham herself who has the anti-Palestinian agenda, or is it her bosses barking instructions into her earpiece?