BBC director-general Tim Davie says an investigation will take place into the Gaza documentary (Image: pa)
BBC bosses have admitted they are investigating whether any licence fee money went to Hamas after a controversial Gaza documentary. They admitted the programme removed from iPlayer could be put back and apologised for “serious failings”, admitting: “People weren’t doing their job.”
A new investigation has been launched into the programme, called Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone, after it emerged the child narrator is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who has worked as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture. But asked by MPs whether the documentary could be returned to the iPlayer streaming service, possibly after it had been edited or with a “health warning” added, director-general Tim Davie said: “I am not ruling anything out.”
Asked if the could be sure whether any payment for the documentary had ended up going to Hamas, he said: “Part of the work is to do a forensic analysis of exactly what happened to that money.”
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After conducting an initial review of the programme, the broadcaster said independent production company Hoyo Films, which made the documentary, told them the boy’s mother had been paid “a limited sum of money for the narration”.
The previously said it has no plans to broadcast the documentary again or return it to iPlayer.
Mr Davie and chairman Samir Shah were quizzed by the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee for a hearing organised before the documentary row broke out.
They said that the independent production firm that produced the documentary failed to provide them with information about the child.
Dr Shah said the affair was “a dagger to the heart” of the s reputation. He said: “To my shock, I think we found that there were serious failings on both sides, on the independent production side as well as on the ’s side.”
He said an “interim report” had found mistakes were made, telling MPs: “What we have now done is to ask for a further investigation.”
Dr Shah said the ’s editorial guidelines are “very good, they are very strong”, but he said: “It wasn’t so much the processes that were at fault as people weren’t doing their job.”
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And he pledged: “We will get to the bottom of this and we will take appropriate actions.”
Mr Davie said: “There is a lot of frustration and disappointment. We are very sorry to the audience.”
He insisted: “Overall, I am proud of the way we are covering some of these polarised, fiendishly difficult events … but in this case there are flaws.”
However, when asked directly whether the programme could return to iPlayer in some form, he said: “I am not ruling anything out.” He said he could not “trust” the documentary “at this point”.
He said: “Part of the work is to do a forensic analysis of exactly what happened to that money.”