The production company for a BBC Gaza documentary featuring people tied to Hamas paid the wife of a Hamas official and was aware of the links to the terrorist organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation said in a Thursday statement addressing the outrage surrounding it.
A BBC spokesperson said that Hoyo Films had paid the mother of the boy that narrated the Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone documentary, but had reportedly assured that no payments were made to members of Hamas or its affiliates, despite their acknowledgment that they knew the boy’s father was a deputy agriculture minister in the Hamas government.
A full audit of program expenditures is reportedly set to be conducted to obtain additional assurance that £400,000 of BBC funds did not go to the proscribed terrorist organization, and the BBC said it was requesting financial accounts from the production company.
The state broadcaster blamed Hoyo Films for failing to disclose the Hamas connections to the BBC despite being privy to them.
“During the production process, the independent production company was asked in writing a number of times by the BBC about any potential connections he and his family might have with Hamas,” said the BBC spokesperson.
Calls for an independent inquiry
Amid calls for an independent inquiry, the BBC said that editorial complaints and reviews director Peter Johnston would review all the issues with the program. The spokesperson asserted in the statement that Johnston was independent of BBC News and reported directly to the organization’s director-general.
Hoyo Films said in a statement that it was fully cooperating with Johnston.
“When we were commissioned to make Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, our aim was to make an engaging and insightful documentary about the lives of young people in Gaza,” Hoyo Films explained. “We felt it was important to hear from voices that haven’t been represented on screen throughout the war with dignity and respect – and to tell the story about the devastating impact of war on their everyday lives.”
The BBC statement came after the BBC Board’s Thursday meeting, with the board acknowledging that there were “serious flaws in the making of this program.”
“Some of these were made by the production company, and some by the BBC; all of them are unacceptable. BBC News takes full responsibility for these and the impact that these have had on the corporation’s reputation,” said the BBC spokesperson. “We apologize for this.”
DURING A Thursday parliamentary session, Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport Lisa Nandy said that she had discussed the documentary scandal with BBC director-general Tim Davie earlier that week and sought “cast-iron assurances that no money paid has fallen into the hands of Hamas.”
While Nandy said that the BBC had editorial independence from the government, she said that she expected to be kept briefed about the investigation.
The secretary also noted that she had discussed with Davie the editorial guideline to report Hamas as a proscribed terrorist organization.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch on Friday thanked the BBC board for taking the scandal seriously, but said that television license fee payers deserved more answers.
Badenoch noted on X/Twitter that if the BBC repeatedly asked about Hamas ties, they must have had suspicions about the issue. She also rejected the BBC’s investigation as independent, since the department was staffed by BBC employees. Badenoch reiterated the warning in her letter last Sunday to Davie that the party’s support of license fees was dependent on the institution’s response to its bias issues.
Yesh Atid chairman and opposition leader Yair Lapid said on X on Friday that it was difficult to take the BBC’s apology seriously when the broadcaster demonstrated systemic bias against Israel.
Researcher David Collier, who discovered the documentary’s Hamas connections in a February 18 exposé, also warned on social media that the issues at the BBC were not just about one documentary.
“They have been producing Hamas propaganda for years,” said Collier. “The only difference this time is that we proved it.”
After the documentary was pulled from its streaming service, over 800 media figures and workers issued a joint statement condemning a “campaign” against the film.
“A campaign has sought to discredit the documentary using the father of 14-year-old Abdullah al-Yazouri, one of the film’s child protagonists. Dr. Ayman al-Yazouri served as Gaza’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture, a civil service role concerned with food production,” read the letter.
“Conflating such governance roles in Gaza with terrorism is both factually incorrect and dehumanizing. This broad-brush rhetoric assumes that Palestinians holding administrative roles are inherently complicit in violence – a racist trope that denies individuals their humanity and right to share their lived experiences.”
Collier on Sunday rejected the dismissal of Yazouri’s Hamas ties, arguing on X that he was part of a family that co-founded Hamas.
Reform MP Rupert Lowe dismissed the letter writers, which included ex-footballer and BBC host Gary Lineker, joking on X, “Anything useful these ‘media figures’ know about the Middle East is restricted to the hummus section in Waitrose.”
Former MP Claudia Webbe said on social media on Thursday that the documentary was removed because it documented “Israel’s genocide” and made “the powerful uncomfortable.”
Socialist commentator Owen Jones said Friday on X that the BBC was whitewashing “one of the most obscene crimes of our age” by removing the documentary.