UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced on Saturday that she would be holding urgent talks with the BBC following concerns that the broadcaster aired a documentary containing Hamas propaganda.
Critics argue that the BBC is violating its own guidelines by failing to address complaints about BBC Arabic’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. Many say the BBC has either ignored the complaints or provided only partial responses, with only a few being addressed within the BBC’s 10-working-day deadline.
Camera UK, an organization dedicated to promoting fair and balanced coverage of Israel in the British media, has filed 33 complaints about BBC Arabic’s output since the October 7 Hamas attacks. The organization is now calling for a parliamentary inquiry to hold the BBC accountable for upholding standards of accuracy and impartiality.
Conservative peer Lord Stuart Polak has supported this call, stating that an independent inquiry into the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli-Hamas conflict and its handling of complaints is necessary. Polak suggested that repeated mistakes could indicate a deeper issue within the BBC, potentially reflecting a prioritization of individual viewpoints over the broadcaster’s Charter commitment to impartiality.
On October 16, 2023, the Telegraph published a report by Victoria Ward titled “BBC program questions whether Hamas massacre took place.” The original BBC headline said: “Hamas rejects accusations that its gunmen carried out atrocities in the Israeli Kfar Aza village.” The original BBC headline said: “Hamas rejects accusations that its gunmen carried out atrocities in the Israeli Kfar Aza village.”
The headline was later changed before the entire report was removed from the BBC website, and later from YouTube.
The BBC issued an apology last Wednesday night after airing a documentary about the experiences of children in Gaza, which featured 14-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri as the central figure and narrator, without disclosing that he was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, a deputy minister in the Hamas-run government. Secretary Nandy stated she would engage with the BBC to stress the importance of “getting it right” in its coverage of the Gaza conflict. The documentary, “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone,” aired last Monday and depicted the war from the perspective of three Gazan children.
Another child interviewed in the “documentary,” Zakaria, 11, stars in pictures posted on social media wearing a Hamas headband and holding a machine gun next to a fighter. In another image, he is seen with his arm around a Hamas gunman. In separate video footage, Zakaria is shown leading children in chanting praise for Mohammed Deif, a key leader of the October 7 Hamas massacre.
Sec. Nandy stated she would also be addressing staff training on antisemitism within the BBC, as well as the broadcaster’s broader handling of the Gaza war and Israel, including how it treats its internal staff. She made these remarks following an open letter to the BBC, signed by dozens of figures from the broadcasting and media industries, urging an investigation into the production of the controversial documentary.
The signatories—among them Danny Cohen, former controller of BBC Television; JK Rowling’s agent Neil Blair; agent Anita Land; and Claudia Rosencrantz, a commissioner for Britain’s Got Talent—called for the BBC to remove the documentary from the Internet.
A formal complaint about the film was also filed by the group Labour Against Antisemitism, which argued that the documentary promoted “Hamas propaganda as reliable fact at the taxpayers’ expense.” In response, the BBC stated that it had followed its usual compliance procedures in producing the film, but had not been made aware of the connection between the children and Hamas by the independent producers.
A BBC spokesman emphasized the broadcaster’s commitment to transparency, noting that additional details would be added to the film before it is retransmitted. The BBC defended the film as a powerful depiction of the devastating effects of the war in Gaza, offering an important child’s perspective on the conflict.
Never mind that the child is employed by a murderous terror organization…
