THE BBC has issued a response after it was criticised for broadcasting a film on Gaza which featured the child of a Hamas official.
Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone, which aired on Monday on BBC Two, features Abdullah Al-Yazouri as a narrator who speaks about what life is like in the territory amid the siege by Israel.
Claims that Abdullah is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture, led a group including former BBC One controller Danny Cohen and producer Leo Pearlman to write to BBC director-general Tim Davie.
London-based Hoyo Films, which produced the documentary, has previously made BBC documentary Ukraine: Enemy In The Woods, which was filmed by Ukrainian soldiers amid the war with Russia.
The broadcaster 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 retransmission. We apologise for the omission of that detail from the original film.”
The new text reads: “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 BBC statement went on: “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.”
In a letter to the BBC, Cohen and others had said: “Given the serious nature of these concerns, the BBC should immediately postpone any broadcast repeats of the programme, remove it from iPlayer and take down any social media clips of the programme until an independent investigation is carried out and its findings published with full transparency for licence-fee payers.
“Can the BBC confirm it will take this action?”
They raised concerns about the “editorial standards of this programme and the BBC’s compliance with the Ofcom Broadcasting Code, its own Editorial Guidelines and English law”, and asked for the corporation to answer questions about the documentary.
They said: “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?
“If the BBC was aware that Abdullah Al-Yazouri was the son of a terrorist leader, why was this not disclosed to audiences during the programme?
“If the BBC was not aware that Abdullah Al-Yazouri is the son of a terrorist leader, what diligence checks were undertaken and why did they fail?”
