For the second time this year, the BBC has dropped a documentary film about the Israel-Hamas conflict, announcing that it will no longer move forward with Gaza: Doctors Under Attack.
The BBC greenlit Doctors Under Attack last year from Basement Films, the production company run by former Channel 4 News editor Ben de Pear.
It was meant to spotlight the plight of medics in Gaza, but production was paused in April following the scandal over Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, the HOYO Films doc that was found to have been narrated by the child of a Hamas minister.
A BBC investigation into How to Survive a Warzone remains ongoing. Peter Johnston, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews, is examining the failings that led to the film being broadcast.
Now, the BBC has said it will not screen Doctors Under Attack, or carry any of its contents in news bulletins, after discussions with Basement “reached the end of the road” on Thursday.
In a lengthy statement, the BBC said: “We have come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect of the BBC.
“Impartiality is a core principle of BBC News. It is one of the reasons that we are the world’s most trusted broadcaster. Therefore, we are transferring ownership of the film material to Basement Films.”
The corporation continued: “We want to thank the doctors and contributors and we are sorry we could not tell their stories. The BBC will continue to cover events in Gaza impartially.”
De Pear has been contacted for comment. It is not clear what brought the talks between the BBC and Basement to a head.
De Pear did, however, personally criticize BBC director-general Tim Davie on a public platform at the Sheffield DocFest on Thursday. He said Davie is “just a PR person,” who has meddled in editorial decisions and is leading an organization that is “failing” in its duty to report on the Gaza crisis properly.
“Something needs to happen because they are making decisions from a PR defensive point of view rather than a journalistic one. If you make a decision on a journalistic basis you can defend it, but if you make it on a PR basis, you can’t,” de Pear said, per a report in Broadcast.
The BBC said it spent weeks with de Pear attempting to get Gaza doctors’ voices heard. “Our aim was to find a way to air some of the material in our news programmes, in line with our impartiality standards, before the review [into How to Survive a Warzone] was published,” it said.
The BBC added: “Contrary to some reports, since we paused production of Gaza: Doctors Under Attack in April, it has not undergone the BBC’s final pre-broadcast sign-off processes.”
The BBC’s coverage of the Gaza crisis has stoked strong feelings on both sides of the conflict, with How to Survive a Warzone illustrating the fraught nature of the debate.
The UK’s Jewish community was appalled that the BBC screened a film narrated by a boy with Hamas connections that were not declared to viewers. Others argued that the BBC’s decision to pull How To Survive a Warzone was an act of “censorship” that played into Israel’s agenda.
