BBC Apologizes for ‘Flawed’ Gaza Documentary

(JNS) – The BBC apologized Thursday for “serious flaws” in a Gaza documentary it had aired featuring the son of a Hamas official.

The controversy over the film, which has been taken off the air, prompted a rare intervention by the U.K. government, with “consequences” expected for the network, a BBC insider told The Sunday Times.

A BBC spokesperson said in a statement that some of the “serious flaws” in the documentary, titled, “Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone,” were made “by the production company, and some by the BBC; all of them are unacceptable. BBC News takes full responsibility for these and the impact that these have had on the Corporation’s reputation. We apologise for this.”

The statement centered on the fact that the young narrator of the film is the son of the deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas government. The film’s producers at Hoyo Films knew this but didn’t tell the BBC, which then failed because it “did not uncover that fact and the documentary was aired,” according to the statement.

Hoyo Films paid the boy’s family $880 for his role in the film, which cost about $500,000 to make, according to The Sunday Times. Freelance journalist David Collier discovered the boy’s connection to the Hamas government official within hours of the film’s airing on Feb. 17 on BBC2, according to the article.

Danny Cohen, the former controller of BBC1, called on her to ensure that the BBC holds an independent inquiry into the documentary and “wider systemic issues of anti-Israel bias” at the broadcaster rather than allowing it “to mark its own homework,” as he told The Sunday Times.

Collier and others uncovered additional issues with the documentary, including captions mistranslating “jihad against the Jews” as “fighting against Israeli forces.”

A second child who appeared in the film was seen holding what looked like a gun and standing beside a Hamas terrorist. The terrorist organization’s use of child soldiers was not mentioned in the film.

On Tuesday, dozens of protesters, many from the Jewish community of the United Kingdom, protested outside the BBC’s headquarters in connection with the film.

Last year, a team of around 20 lawyers and 20 data scientists led by British lawyer Trevor Asserson found about 1,500 alleged breaches of the BBC’s own editorial guidelines in its coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas and other Iranian proxies since Oct. 7, 2023.

Their report found that the BBC repeatedly downplayed Hamas terrorism while presenting Israel as a militaristic and aggressive nation.

In 2023, the Campaign Against Antisemitism, a nonprofit that led the protest Tuesday outside the BBC’s headquarters, found that a regular contributor to BBC Arabic had called for “death to Israel” and described Jewish state as “occupied Palestine” live on air.

Mayssaa Abdul Khalek, a Lebanon-based reporter, also reportedly called for Arab states to attack Israel. These calls appeared on social media alongside links to her broadcasts for the BBC.

In 2004, the senior broadcast journalist Malcolm Balen penned a 20,000-word document for the BBC following persistent complaints from the public and the Israeli government on its anti-Israel bias. The BBC has successfully fought, including in court, to keep the report that it had itself commissioned under wraps. It remains unpublished.

The BBC’s annual budget is about $7.5 billion, mostly coming from license fees paid by British residents. They pay more than $200 annually per household to fund the broadcaster.