BBC executives will be spoken to by ministers after the corporation aired a documentary about Gaza that featured the son of a Hamas minister.
Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said she would discuss the programme with the director-general of the BBC as part of talks about its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
She came under pressure to act after 45 prominent figures from TV, film and media called on the BBC to take down the programme.
Asked about their concerns, Nandy said she had watched the show and stressed: “It’s something that I will be discussing with them, particularly around the way in which they sourced the people who were featured in the program.”
Nandy said such issues were “difficult” and praised the BBC generally for taking “more care than most broadcasters in terms of the way that they try to portray these things”.
She added: “They’ve been attacked for being too pro-Gaza. They’ve been attacked for being anti-Gaza. But it is absolutely essential that we get this right.”
Nandy is expected to raise the issue as part of regular talks with senior BBC executives, including the chairman and director-general to ensure any avoidance of antisemitism.
Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, said there was an ongoing discussion with the BBC about its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict
AYFUN SALCI/ZUMA PRESS WIRE
In an open letter, the British Jews asked if the corporation knew the film’s 14-year-old protagonist is the “son of a terrorist leader”, and raised “serious concerns” about the programme.
At the same time, Jon Sopel, former North America editor for BBC News, said the co-operation had “serious questions to answer” and called for a “health warning” to be placed on the documentary.
Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone was first aired on BBC2 on Monday at 9pm. It is still available on BBC iPlayer and was scheduled to be broadcast as a repeat on Wednesday night.
A report by an independent researcher, published on Tuesday, claimed the film’s narrator, Abdullah Al-Yazouri, was the son of the deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza, and also related to one of the original founders of Hamas.
Abdullah is believed to be the son of Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri, the deputy minister for agriculture in the Hamas-run government in Gaza
The BBC said: “Since the transmission of our documentary on Gaza, the BBC has become aware of the family connections of the film’s narrator, a child called Abdullah.
“We’ve promised our audiences the highest standards of transparency, so it is only right that as a result of this new information, we add some more detail to the film before its re-transmission. We apologise for the omission of that detail from the original film.
“We followed all of our usual compliance procedures in the making of this film, but we had not been informed of this information by the independent producers when we complied and then broadcast the finished film.
“The film remains a powerful child’s eye view of the devastating consequences of the war in Gaza which we believe is an invaluable testament to their experiences, and we must meet our commitment to transparency.”
For future repeats and on iPlayer, the film will now clarify: “The narrator of this film is 13-year-old Abdullah. His father has worked as a deputy agriculture minister for the Hamas-run government in Gaza. The production team had full editorial control of filming with Abdullah.”
The 45 signatories to the letter include the former director of BBC Television, Danny Cohen,t the actress Tracy Ann-Oberman, the former controller of ITV Entertainment, Claudia Rosencrantz, and JK Rowling’s literary agent, Neil Blair.
Cohen said: “Rather than take responsibility for their own serious failures the BBC is trying to throw the producer of the documentary under the bus. Yesterday, the BBC claimed they had ‘full editorial control’. Today it is someone else’s fault. The serious questions asked of the BBC remain unanswered: why did our national broadcaster fail to carry out the basic journalistic checks needed to ensure that propaganda from the terrorists of Hamas was not broadcast in primetime?”
They asked 19 questions about how the programme was produced, and whether the BBC’s complied with the Ofcom Broadcasting Code, its own editorial guidelines and English law.
They ask if Abdullah’s family, or any Hamas officials, were paid any money, or if his parents had signed a release form authorising his participation in the documentary.
“Was it known to the BBC that the narrator and principal contributor of the documentary, Abdullah Al-Yazouri, is the son of a senior leader of the proscribed terrorist group, Hamas?” the letter read.
The man said to be Abdullah’s father, Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri, is responsible for overseeing “agricultural activities in Gaza strip”, according to his LinkedIn profile, and before that held senior positions in the education ministry for a decade.
The researcher behind the claims, David Collier, found social media evidence suggested he was also related to Ibrahim Al-Yazouri, one of the original founders of Hamas, who died in February 2021.
Sopel told LBC: “Of course, the producers were hamstrung by the fact they didn’t have access to Gaza, but apparently, the person who found out about the Hamas link was someone who just Googled it.
“If the producers haven’t done that, they have some pretty serious questions to answer.”
The open letter also asks what checks were carried out on the remote crew working in Gaza. Collier claimed a post by one of the Palestinian cameramen employed by the BBC celebrated the October 7 attacks, calling it “The Flood” with a handshake emoji, in reference to Hamas’s name for the massacre, “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”.
The BBC has been approached for comment.
