BBC: Can it sink any lower?

The BBC’s reputation is at a desperately low ebb following the release of its “investigation” into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, ignoring entirely their failure to give the public the chance to see a searing indictment of Israel’s assault on Gaza that brilliantly succeeded in humanising the Palestinian children suffering endless bombardment.

While the corporation indulged in self flagellation which predictably failed to halt the attacks upon it from Zionists and right-wingers bent on destroying public service broadcasting in the UK, the makers of the second film scrapped by the BBC, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, released their own account of their experience, which we publish below.

We also publish here an excellent Double Down News video by Al Jazeera investigations journalist Richard Sanders, reminding us of the BBC’s role in promoting Israeli propaganda throughout the period of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.

NWI

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Double Down News shows how the BBC allowed pro-Israel propagandists free rein to promote their narrative in the Corbyn years.

Basement Films tells its side of the Gaza documentary story on X

July 15, 2025.

Below is Deborah Turness’s email to all staff forwarded to us by multiple people in @BBCNews. In it there is a reference to our film and the @BBCNews failure to broadcast it. This section on our film is grossly misleading, and has been repeated on @BBCWorldatOne and we shall explain why below it; “For completeness, we believe the documentary ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’ was public interest journalism which should be shown and we tried very hard to find ways to tell the doctors’ stories on our platforms. However following comments from the narrator on the Today programme calling Israel a “rogue state that’s committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing and mass murdering Palestinians”, it was impossible for us to broadcast the material without risking our impartiality.”

Deborah and other execs delayed the film in February, shelved it in March, then decided it could not run in late April. From early May they were negotiating its release back to us from @BBCNews weeks before any appearances on @BBCr4today as they said it could and would not run in the form you saw it on @Channel4

@BBCNews decided they were only going to run 3 x 1 minute clips of the film on their platforms. A film they all lauded as “vital public interest journalism” and their lawyers approved. The film was never going to run on @BBCNews and we were given multiple and sometimes contradictory reasons for this, the only consistent theme for us being a paralysing atmosphere of fear around Gaza. Their insistence on a gagging clause forced us to speak out and they never ran the 3 x 1 minute clips.

Again, to be clear, from May onwards this was all @BBCNews was going to run, clips, not the film. If #BBCVerify want to get to the bottom of this maybe you can look through our scores of emails on this matter, and SAR/FOI the execs’. If Peter Johnstone is now at a loose end perhaps he can investigate the failure to run a programme that another broadcaster was able to run within a week (partly because the @bbc had repeatedly complied it); and the unbearable pressure on @BBCNews from board level down on Gaza. That is an existential matter.

The full email; Message for News and Current Affairs about the review into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone

What review findings mean and what happens next

Deborah Turness CEO of BBC News & Current Affairs July 14, 2025

Hi everyone,

I wanted to write to you following the publication of the Peter Johnston review into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. This review has been very much in the public eye and impacts all of us in News, so I first want to thank you for your professionalism and patience as this work was done. It has not been an easy time and I know you will have been fielding difficult questions and conversations both at work and outside the BBC.

I am incredibly proud of the work we do, each and every day, to bring audiences the very best journalism on the stories of the moment – however hard they are to cover. The Middle East conflict is one of the most polarising stories that we face and your dedication to getting this right for our audiences is acknowledged and trusted across and outside of the BBC, so thank you.

I also want to recognise the outstanding work of those in our Current Affairs team. You produce exceptional documentaries, original and investigative journalism that is not only ground-breaking and thought-provoking, but an absolutely critical and valued part of our offer to audiences. The findings of the report published today do not take away from that.

Review findings and actions

As you’ll have read in the Director General’s email, the review found that Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone breached one of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, by failing to disclose information about the child narrator’s father’s position within the Hamas-run government. There were no other breaches, including any of impartiality.  The report said that careful consideration of the requirements of due impartiality was undertaken in this project given the highly contested nature of the subject matter.

The programme was made for the BBC by the independent production company HOYO Films. While the review finds that HOYO Films has the “most responsibility for this failure”, we at the BBC are editorially responsible and must be accountable for all the content we broadcast and publish, and the report says that the BBC does also “bear some responsibility”. We take these findings very seriously and will now put in place new robust measures to strengthen and protect our journalism, and avoid a similar situation in future. We will not reinstate the programme in its current form, but will now explore the possibility of re-editing some of the material in short form.

Here is the full Action Plan and a summary follows:

BBC Accountability: There has been a breach and the BBC will now take fair, appropriate action, based on the findings, to ensure accountability. We will not comment further on any individual confidential processes.

Translation: As per Peter Johnston’s recommendation we will issue new editorial guidance to give clarity to our journalists on the use and translation of the word ‘Yahud/ Yahudi’ into English. Our default will be to use the literal translation of those terms as ‘Jews/ Jewish’, with all programme makers to take advice if they plan to change the literal translation. We will be in touch with more details on the guidance and its implementation.

Narration: We will immediately act on Peter Johnston’s recommendation that, in contested Current Affairs programmes, the narrator must be subject to a higher level of scrutiny, with “assurance that their own background, connections and/or viewpoints will not put either them or the BBC in a difficult position or raise questions of impartiality”.

A new leadership role in News documentaries and current affairs. BBC News will create a new dedicated Director role on the BBC News Board. This new role will have strategic leadership of our long form output across BBC News. We will advertise the role in the next seven days.

Enhanced editorial controls: A new “First Gate” process will mean no high-risk long form programmes can become a formal commission until all potential compliance considerations are considered and listed, including rigorous social media and background checks. These will be tracked through to the “Final Gate” process, which was introduced earlier this year and will now be made permanent. Going forward, we will also embed a dedicated senior BBC News executive producer inside the production team for every high-risk long form film produced by an independent supplier for BBC News.  These measures are designed to ensure that even when we are working under great pressure, at pace, and on difficult content, we have the right steps in place to protect our coverage and ensure absolute accuracy.

I want to take this opportunity to mention the documentary ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’ and our decision not to broadcast it. You will remember that we had decided to pause our plans to broadcast the programme, which was also made by an independent production company, pending the publication of Peter Johnston’s review. We anticipated relevant findings from the review and the need to put them into action. As mentioned, the report has now made a number of recommendations, including greater scrutiny of narrators on our most contested programmes.

For completeness, we believe the documentary ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack’ was public interest journalism which should be shown and we tried very hard to find ways to tell the doctors’ stories on our platforms. However following comments from the narrator on the Today programme calling Israel a “rogue state that’s committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing and mass murdering Palestinians”, it was impossible for us to broadcast the material without risking our impartiality.

I will be on tomorrow’s scheduled ‘Your BBC News’ call at 14:00 BST to answer your questions. If you’d like to ask anything in the meantime, please don’t hesitate to contact your manager or a member of News Board.

Finally, I’d like to reiterate my thanks for your unwavering commitment to our journalism and to our audiences. Your resilience, judgement and expertise ensure we remain the UK’s and world’s most trusted news provider. To keep earning that trust, it’s critical that we continue to be courageous in our coverage of today’s complex world, and that we hold ourselves to account when we get things wrong.

Thank you,  Deborah

2:28 pm · 14 Jul 2025