A FORMER BBC journalist has accused the broadcaster of a “shocking abdication of responsibility” over a Palestinian child at the centre of a documentary that was pulled from iPlayer.
Karishma Patel – who left the BBC last October because of its Gaza coverage – has claimed the BBC’s rules on child safeguarding have “fallen by the wayside” in its decision to take Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone off its streaming service.
The programme was removed from iPlayer after it emerged the 13-year-old narrator, Abdullah, was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who has worked as deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza’s government, which is administered by Hamas.
Since then, Abdullah has spoken with Middle East Eye and hit out at the BBC, saying he holds the corporation responsible for his fate.
He hoped the documentary could “spread the message of the suffering that children in Gaza witness”, adding that it was “disappointing” to see the backlash against him and his family since the documentary was removed.
The young boy stressed he now fears for his safety and said the situation had caused him serious “mental pressure”, which he holds the BBC responsible for.
Patel – who worked for the BBC for almost five years, mostly as a newsreader for BBC Radio 5 Live – claimed the broadcaster did not need to remove the documentary and had subsequently failed in its child safeguarding duties in doing so.
“Child safeguarding is a massive part of BBC training. It’s in editorial policy and it’s something BBC journalists are taught to take very seriously,” she told the Sunday National.
“If a child is part of your journalistic work, you are responsible for them, you should be checking in on them.
“In this case, all those rules have fallen by the wayside very clearly. Abdullah himself has come out and said he has been targeted in different ways – cyber-bullied, stalked, there have been threats made against him that I’ve seen – and he says the BBC has not been in touch to apologise.
“It’s a deeply shocking abdication of responsibility and it goes to show just how far Palestinian children have been adultified, dehumanised. He deserves the same duty of care any child in BBC coverage would be getting.”
On the removal of the documentary, Patel – who covered the situation in Gaza for many months – said the BBC “chose the most extreme option” and could have simply added context to allow people to still see the reality of what is happening to children in Gaza.
“I have multiple issues with the fact it was pulled including the fact that of the many editorial options the BBC had, one of which could have been just adding some additional context and re-releasing it and leaving it in that format, it chose the most extreme option which was to remove it from iPlayer. That doesn’t happen often,” Patel said.
However, Davie also mentioned he had received 1800 complaints over its removal, compared to just 500 accusing the film of being biased against Israel.
Patel said the approach by the BBC highlighted a “massive double standard” in how editorial concerns are applied.
She said: “He [Tim Davie] was talking about distrusting the entire film on the basis of this connection that the child narrator has.
“One of the things that occurred to me is the fact that the BBC over the past 15 or 16 months has on two different occasions willingly chosen to embed with the Israeli military and to be openly subject to its censor. That was Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza quite early on and there was a Lebanese town as well, where a BBC correspondent followed the Israeli military into the town.
“There is a lot of concern around potential influence over this documentary but there was very little public concern over our public broadcaster embedding with the Israeli military.
“What I’m trying to highlight is that there is a massive double standard in terms of how editorial concerns are applied and this documentary is a good example of that.”
She added: “I think they [the BBC] bowed to external influence which is a troubling development. Our public broadcaster is meant to be independent and that’s not what we are seeing here.”
Patel said her decision to leave the BBC came after she gradually began to feel a “massive disjunct” between the evidence she was seeing and gathering on what was happening in Gaza and what the BBC was “choosing to do editorially”.
She said: “For example, Israel has been consistently presented as a reliable source [by the BBC].
“It’s a bizarre thing to do considering how many times Israel has lied. But also, there's no reason to just take for granted that a certain source is reliable. The BBC should be regularly questioning that but also making it transparent to the public when a source isn't reliable or they're not sure if a source is reliable.”
“When they are talking about Israelis, whether that's the Israeli military, the Israeli government or just Israelis making allegations, they [the BBC] tend to use phrases like ‘tell’ instead of allege, and that that does a lot of heavy lifting,” she said.
“We should be seeing editorial consistency and at least some parity in that language.
“The kind of language used to talk about Palestinians being killed is incredibly telling. It’s very passive language, regularly. Talking about Palestinians dying rather than Palestinians being killed by Israel, leaving accountability out of it entirely, is incredibly editorially inconsistent because there are plenty of headlines about Ukraine and Russia that use very different language."
In a column for The Independent last week, Patel said the BBC needs to conclude Israel is violating international law and shape its coverage around that going forward.
Asked if she had any faith in that happening, she said: “In its current state? No.
“But I do have faith in some of the journalists inside who are persisting, who are trying to do a good job, who are trying to come to those robust conclusions and communicate them to the public.
“Those journalists do exist and they exist in every mainstream newsroom.”
The BBC has been approached for comment.
