5 hours ago
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A BBC documentary about children in Gaza breached the corporation’s editorial guidelines for accuracy by failing to disclose its child narrator was the son of a Hamas official, an internal review has found.
However, the inquiry into the making of Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone found no other breaches of guidelines in its production, including impartiality. It found that no outside interests “inappropriately impacted on the programme”.
“Careful consideration of the requirements of due impartiality was undertaken in this project given the highly contested nature of the subject matter,” the report found.
Peter Johnston, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews, undertook the review after the documentary was pulled from the iPlayer following the claims against it. The programme was made for the BBC by the independent production company Hoyo Films.
Johnston found the father’s status was “critical information”, which was not shared with the BBC before broadcast. “Regardless of how the significance or otherwise of the narrator’s father’s position was judged, the audience should have been informed about this,” he said.
The review concluded Hoyo Films had not intentionally misled the BBC, but said it bore most responsibility for the failure. It concluded the BBC also bore responsibility.
It also found no “reasonable basis” to conclude that anyone engaged or paid in connection with the programme was subject to financial sanctions, such as Hamas. A fee of £795 was paid for the narrator.
The director general, Tim Davie, is facing the most challenging week of his five-year leadership of the BBC. He is under serious political pressure from Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, who recently queried why no one had lost their job over the documentary.
Davie said: “Peter Johnston’s report identifies a significant failing in relation to accuracy in this documentary. I thank him for his thorough work and I am sorry for this failing.
“We will now take action on two fronts – fair, clear and appropriate actions to ensure proper accountability and the immediate implementation of steps to prevent such errors being repeated.”
The BBC has not yet commented on whether anyone will be fired over the findings.
The report found three members of the independent production company knew of the father’s position, but no one within the BBC knew this at that time. The review found this failure to bring the information to the BBC’s attention was a “significant oversight by the production company”.
It also criticised the BBC team for not being “sufficiently proactive” with initial editorial checks and for a “lack of critical oversight of unanswered or partially answered questions”.
Hoyo Films said in a statement: “We take the findings in Peter Johnston’s report on Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone extremely seriously and apologise for the mistake that resulted in a breach of the editorial guidelines.”
