Welcome to this week’s Media Watch, which is officially back after a few weeks away!
A key story this week has seen the BBC respond to criticism of its documentary film on Gaza which it emerged featured the child of a Hamas official. Let’s take you through what has happened…
Gaza film taken off iPlayer
At the start of last week, a documentary entitled Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone aired on BBC Two featuring Abdullah Al-Yazouri as a narrator who speaks about what life is like in the territory amid the siege by Israel.
But claims that Abdullah was 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.
The BBC responded to this saying the identity of Abdullah’s family was “new information”. It apologised and pledged to add some more detail to the film before its retransmission.
The new text of the film then read: “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.”
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?”
On Friday, the BBC then removed the film from iPlayer while carrying out “further due diligence with the production company”.
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.
In a statement on its clarifications and corrections page, the BBC said: “There have been continuing questions raised about the programme and in the light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company.
“The programme will not be available on iPlayer while this is taking place.”
The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians criticised concerns raised about the Hoyo Films documentary, and urged the BBC to “stand firm against these attempts to prevent first-hand accounts of life in Gaza from reaching audiences”.
Fake Anas Sarwar comments spread online
Elsewhere, a screenshot of a fake article on Anas Sarwar (below) calling Billy Connolly “vulgar” has spread like wildfire online.
The article appears to claim the Scottish Labour leader called Connolly “outdated”, “vulgar” and “offensive” and has received thousands of interactions.
A simple search combination of Sarwar and Connolly’s name actually shows the Scottish Labour Leader lauding praise on "The Big Yin" for propelling Scottish humour around the globe.
Despite his apparent liking for U-turns – which might explain why Scots believed it – this is complete fake news and yet another warning to people to have a wee check about where a picture or story has come from before sharing it with your followers.
Watch this space…
To finish up, just a quick note to say we will be sharing an extensive interview on Thursday with journalist Ash Sarkar about some of the key issues in the wider media at the moment. Keep an eye on The National’s website for more!
