The BBC has been forced to admit that its primetime documentary “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone” failed to meet the high journalistic standards we should all expect from our national broadcaster.
After it was aired, it was revealed that the programme featured the son of a Hamas minister as its central character and a payment was made to his family. Yet these crucial facts were concealed from viewers.
I understand that BBC News’ executives were extremely proud of the film before it was broadcast and spoke of it glowingly in internal meetings. Yet anyone who saw it, particularly from within the television industry, will have been alarmed by any number of red flags that brought its credibility and accuracy into question. Those obvious flaws escaped the scrutiny of senior executives who saw the film before transmission, including the CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness.
Further questions should now be asked about the BBC’s handling of this programme and its implications for the corporation’s broader coverage of Gaza.
Can we trust the sources the BBC uses in Gaza to report accurately, fairly and without bias? What pressure do reporters face from the terrorists of Hamas when preparing their reports? There is ample evidence of the threats and violence suffered by journalists in Gaza who have attempted to stand up to this genocidal regime.
Yet this is never transparently addressed by the corporation in its coverage. And perhaps most troublingly of all, why has the BBC repeatedly relied on reporting by people in the region whose Jew-hate is disturbingly clear from a cursory look at their social media?
What must be understood is that the debacle of this documentary is not an isolated incident. It forms part of a consistent pattern of systemic bias at the BBC when it comes to Israel. It is symptomatic of a repeated institutional blindness to hatred of Jews both in the BBC’s output and its treatment of Jewish employees.
We have reached a critical juncture with this disastrous documentary on Gaza being followed by the failures that led to violent anti-Semitic rhetoric being broadcast to the nation by the BBC from Glastonbury. The open Jew-hate broadcast that weekend led Britain’s Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis to describe it as “a time of national shame” which brought “confidence in our national broadcaster’s ability to treat antisemitism seriously to a new low”.
So this is where we have got to with the BBC: the Jewish community’s leader being crystal-clear that its leaders are not only failing to deal with anti-Semitism, but the problem is getting worse rather than better.
In these circumstances, we should not be surprised that Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes recently said that the BBC’s failings are starting to “erode public trust and confidence”, or that Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy demanded answers about its Glastonbury coverage and its “catastrophic” failings on anti-Semitism.
Whenever racism against Jews at the BBC is exposed, the corporation issues a statement saying that there is no place for anti-Semitism at the organisation. These statements have become utterly meaningless. We know they have no substance to them because nothing has changed.
Words are not enough. Only action matters – direct, unapologetic steps by the corporation’s leaders to deal with issues of anti-Semitism at the BBC. Twenty months after the October 7 attacks, there is still no sign of this. The BBC is becoming defined by editorial failings on issues of racism and institutional cowardice. The Jewish community deserves better.
Danny Cohen was Director of BBC Television from 2013 to 2015
The BBC has been forced to admit that its primetime documentary “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone” failed to meet the high journalistic standards we should all expect from our national broadcaster.
After it was aired, it was revealed that the programme featured the son of a Hamas minister as its central character and a payment was made to his family. Yet these crucial facts were concealed from viewers.
I understand that BBC News’ executives were extremely proud of the film before it was broadcast and spoke of it glowingly in internal meetings. Yet anyone who saw it, particularly from within the television industry, will have been alarmed by any number of red flags that brought its credibility and accuracy into question. Those obvious flaws escaped the scrutiny of senior executives who saw the film before transmission, including the CEO of BBC News Deborah Turness.
Further questions should now be asked about the BBC’s handling of this programme and its implications for the corporation’s broader coverage of Gaza.
Can we trust the sources the BBC uses in Gaza to report accurately, fairly and without bias? What pressure do reporters face from the terrorists of Hamas when preparing their reports? There is ample evidence of the threats and violence suffered by journalists in Gaza who have attempted to stand up to this genocidal regime.
Yet this is never transparently addressed by the corporation in its coverage. And perhaps most troublingly of all, why has the BBC repeatedly relied on reporting by people in the region whose Jew-hate is disturbingly clear from a cursory look at their social media?
What must be understood is that the debacle of this documentary is not an isolated incident. It forms part of a consistent pattern of systemic bias at the BBC when it comes to Israel. It is symptomatic of a repeated institutional blindness to hatred of Jews both in the BBC’s output and its treatment of Jewish employees.
We have reached a critical juncture with this disastrous documentary on Gaza being followed by the failures that led to violent anti-Semitic rhetoric being broadcast to the nation by the BBC from Glastonbury. The open Jew-hate broadcast that weekend led Britain’s Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis to describe it as “a time of national shame” which brought “confidence in our national broadcaster’s ability to treat antisemitism seriously to a new low”.
So this is where we have got to with the BBC: the Jewish community’s leader being crystal-clear that its leaders are not only failing to deal with anti-Semitism, but the problem is getting worse rather than better.
In these circumstances, we should not be surprised that Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes recently said that the BBC’s failings are starting to “erode public trust and confidence”, or that Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy demanded answers about its Glastonbury coverage and its “catastrophic” failings on anti-Semitism.
Whenever racism against Jews at the BBC is exposed, the corporation issues a statement saying that there is no place for anti-Semitism at the organisation. These statements have become utterly meaningless. We know they have no substance to them because nothing has changed.
Words are not enough. Only action matters – direct, unapologetic steps by the corporation’s leaders to deal with issues of anti-Semitism at the BBC. Twenty months after the October 7 attacks, there is still no sign of this. The BBC is becoming defined by editorial failings on issues of racism and institutional cowardice. The Jewish community deserves better.
Danny Cohen was Director of BBC Television from 2013 to 2015