The BBC‘s internal review in Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary breached an editorial rule on accuracy, but the corporation has stopped short of declaring whether any employees will be disciplined over the failure.
Peter Johnston, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews, has examined what led to the film, which premiered in February, being narrated by the child of a Hamas minister, without this fact being declared to audiences. The film, which was an unsparing portrayal of the chaos in Gaza from the perspective of three young people, was later removed from iPlayer.
How to Survive a Warzone was produced by Hoyo Films, an independent production company run by Emmy and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Jamie Roberts. Overseeing the film for the BBC were Joanna Carr, head of current affairs, and commissioning editors Gian Quaglieni and Sarah Waldron.
Johnston concluded that the documentary misled audiences by failing to declare English-speaking narrator Abdullah Al-Yazouri’s Hamas links. This connection was not declared to the BBC prior to the film screening, even though Hoyo was aware for eight months about Al-Yazouri’s family.
After examining 5,000 documents and 150 hours of raw footage, Johnston “does not consider” that Hoyo “intentionally misled” the BBC during the production process, but said the company “bears most responsibility for this failure.”
The report said three members of Hoyo “did not at any stage prior to the broadcast of the programme” share Al-Yazouri’s Hamas links. This was despite a BBC editorial policy advisor questioning Hoyo, weeks before broadcast, about whether “due diligence” had been done on the narrator’s Hamas connections. “I’m sure it has but critics may raise something,” the note said.
The BBC said it would take “fair, clear and appropriate action” against individuals embroiled in the incident, but declined to comment on whether anyone would lose their jobs. The BBC said it had “no current or future planned commissions” with Hoyo.
The BBC has faced huge pressure from Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy to finalize and publish the report. Nandy has openly questioned why nobody has been fired over the debacle, with one source saying that she is “looking for a scalp.”
As Deadline reported over the weekend, individuals embroiled in the review lawyered up as Johnston readied his findings. Johnston, a close ally of director-general Tim Davie, went through the process of Maxwellisation, a practice that gives individuals the opportunity to respond to criticisms made in an official report.
BBC chair Samir Shah has previously said the How to Survive a Warzone film was a “dagger to the heart” of the corporation’s impartiality and trustworthiness. “I have a worry that it wasn’t so much the processes that were at fault but that people weren’t doing their job,” Shah added.
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