• Ben de Pear, former editor of Channel 4 News and executive producer of the documentary, says BBC officials were ‘constantly worried what the Israeli lobby might say, and constantly pushing the balance of the program’

• De Pear remains ‘a great defender of the BBC’ but says: ‘Britain has a free press and ... the conditions for a free press. I just don’t know why every broadcaster isn’t using those conditions’

LONDON

Ben de Pear knows British media from the inside, having spent over three decades leading some of its most reputable organizations.

Yet, his most recent encounter with its biggest institution – the BBC – left the veteran journalist questioning the state of the British media landscape.

In 2022, the year de Pear ended a decorated 10-year stint as editor of Channel 4 News, he set up Basement Films, a documentary production company that has since put out a number of award-winning films, including For Sama, which won over 100 honors, including Cannes and BAFTA, and was also nominated for an Oscar.

The BBC commissioned de Pear and his company for a documentary on Gaza but eventually decided against airing it due to “impartiality” concerns.

Gaza: Doctors Under Attack is a brutal and unsparing account of how Israel has systematically destroyed health care in the Palestinian territory – a record of collapse, of hospitals bombed and medics killed, of an overwhelmed system brought to its knees under siege.

It was, as de Pear explained in an interview with Anadolu, developed over many months with BBC editorial teams. Still, the BBC eventually shelved the documentary, and Channel 4 and Zeteo then bought the production and put it out for the world to watch.

“We first worked with BBC Panorama, but after two months they dropped it. They said they had to do three films about the election,” said de Pear. “Then we worked with BBC Eye from about June last year. We were hoping to get the program out by January. In January it was delayed, February delayed again.”

“From around April and May onwards, they were very clear they weren’t going to run the whole film,” he continued. “We were very unhappy about that, and we got the film back. Channel 4 bought it.”

‘Editorial concern created by political pressure’

Why the BBC walked away remains, in de Pear’s words, ambiguous and unconvincing.

“I think it was editorial concern created by political pressure,” he said. “We do know that when we were trying to comply and get the program properly done, they were constantly worried what the Israeli lobby might say, and constantly pushing the balance of the program ... towards ‘we need to make sure we don’t upset them too much.’”

De Pear, with his decades of reporting and editorial experience, found it to be “a very strange process – one that I’ve never had inside British media before.”

“Channel 4 looked at the same film that the BBC looked at ... and within five days they put it on air. They didn’t have the same concerns. And they’re regulated by the same body, under the same statutes,” he said.

He pointed out the broader editorial anxiety at the BBC over its Gaza coverage, something also brought up by BBC employees who sent letters to the management saying its coverage favored Israel. The more recent one, sent last month, was signed by 121 BBC journalists and more than 300 media industry figures, including de Pear.

“I think the BBC has reported a lot on Gaza. But much of their reporting has given false equivalence, as if this is an equal war … The coverage of Gaza has been bad,” he said. “It hasn’t shown what we see on social media … There are too many dead children and too many dead civilians ... for this to be seen as a symmetric war.

“I think the BBC is overly defensive, and it affects all of their coverage … I just think it’s lost its way on Gaza terribly.”

‘BBC fully committed to covering the conflict impartially’

The BBC has stood firm in the face of accusations from staff and other voices critical about its reporting on Gaza.

“Robust discussions amongst our editorial teams about our journalism are an essential part of the editorial process. We have ongoing discussions about coverage and listen to feedback from staff, and we think these conversations are best had internally,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement to Anadolu.

“Regarding our coverage of Gaza, the BBC is fully committed to covering the conflict impartially and has produced powerful coverage from the region. Alongside breaking news, ongoing analysis, and investigations, we have produced award winning documentaries such as Life and Death in Gaza, and Gaza 101.”

On the controversy around de Pear’s documentary, the spokesperson said the BBC “tried very hard to find ways to tell the doctors’ stories on our platforms.”

One factor in the decision was concern about the social media activity of Ramita Navai, a British award-winning journalist and documentary maker who reported for Gaza: Doctors Under Attack.

A June BBC report said the call to shelve the documentary “was taken … following public comments by de Pear at the Sheffield Documentary Festival, and another of the film’s directors, journalist Ramita Navai, who appeared on Radio 4’s Today discussing the war in Gaza.”

“After (Navai) appeared on the Today programme and called Israel a ‘rogue state that’s committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing and mass murdering Palestinians,’ it was impossible for the BBC to broadcast the material without risking our impartiality,” said the BBC statement to Anadolu.

“The BBC holds itself to the highest standards of impartiality and it would never be acceptable for any BBC journalist to express a personal opinion in this way. We believe this is one of the reasons we’re the world’s most trusted news provider. We were left with no choice but to walk away.”

Next Gaza film ‘probably won’t be for the BBC’

Despite the furor over their last project, de Pear and Basement Films are far from finished with their Gaza coverage.

“We’ve made three documentaries on Gaza so far. The first one won a lot of awards. The second one, Israel’s Reel Extremism, is on Zeteo. The third is Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, and we’re going to make a fourth,” he said. “But I think the next one probably won’t be for the BBC.”

Though de Pear is still, in his words, “a great defender of the BBC,” his conclusion is sobering: “Britain has a free press, and I think it has the conditions for a free press. I just don’t know why every broadcaster isn’t using those conditions.”