Basement Films founder Ben de Pear has renewed his attack on
the BBC, criticising Tim Davie personally and claiming the corporation’s
journalists are being “stymied and silenced”.
article here
A month ago, the former Channel 4 News editor lambasted
the BBC for holding back his indie’s film Gaza: Medics Under Fire from
being broadcast. The film had been cleared by BBC legal and compliance teams,
but the corporation is delaying its release pending the result of an
investigation into its Hoyo Films doc Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone, which has
been pulled from iPlayer pending investigation.
Speaking at Sheffield DocFest, De Pear explicitly blamed
director general Tim Davie for refusing to air the film he co-directed with
Karim Shah and Ramita Navai.
“All the decisions about our film were not taken by
journalists, they were taken by Tim Davie,” he told the Too Hot to Handle: The
Future of Political Documentaries panel. “He is just a PR person. Tim
Davie is taking editorial decisions which, frankly, he is not capable of
making.
“The BBC’s primary purpose is TV news and current affairs,
and if it’s failing on that it doesn’t matter what drama it makes or sports it
covers. It is failing as an institution. And if it’s failing on that then it
needs new management.
“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.”
He said the decision to delay was impacting the BBC’s future
ability to cover such stories and, overall, the corporation was gagging its
journalists from reporting what is going on in the Middle East.
“Doctors and medics we spoke to are no longer prepared to
speak to the BBC because they want their story told, not buried,” he said.
“The BBC has utterly failed. The best journalists in the
world are working inside the BBC and they are being stymied and silenced.
“They are being forced to use language they don’t recognise.
They are not describing something as it clearly is [for fear of impartiality]
and it’s tragic.”
Broadcasters have lost their nerve on Gaza
De Pear was largely critical of British broadcasters’
coverage of the war in Gaza, with the exception of Channel 4. He also
acknowledged some of the work done by Sky and ITV, but his overall verdict was
damning.
“They [broadcasters] are far more worried about offending
the [Israeli] government than they are offending our own. A different standard
applies to [stories about Gaza] than any other story I can remember.”
He contrasted the “hundreds of thousands” of videos of
events filmed from inside Gaza on social media with national news reporting.
“Everybody in the world can see what’s going on and there is
a huge black hole at broadcasters and platforms. It is disgraceful. It’s
flipped that whole fear that social media would somehow undermine journalism.
Journalists have undermined journalism.”
He also criticised the justification used by the BBC and
other broadcasters of having no sanctioned access to report on the ground from
Gaza as “a big excuse.”
“Of course, you can [report on what is happening]. Why can’t
you speak to a Palestinian about their experience? It’s racism, I think,” he
said, to applause from the audience.
He claimed that BBC editors, foreign correspondents and
presenters are “ashamed” of the BBC coverage and have written letters of
complaint to senior leaders.
De Pear and others on the panel, including Havana Marking,
director of Marking Films (Undercover: Exposing the Far Right), criticised
international streamers for failing in their duty to commission social impact
docs.
“If Netflix released a film about Gaza it would probably be
the most watched in the world because it is the most engaged subject in the
world,” De Pear said. “Netflix should be funding films that reflect the what’s
going on in the world. Netflix should be making films about war zones. Netflix
should be taking risks. They shouldn’t just be taken safe bets on environmental
films with Attenborough.”
BBC rejects characterisation
Responding to de Pear’s comments, a BBC spokesperson said the BBC “totally reject this characterisation of our coverage”.
“The BBC has continually produced powerful journalism about this conflict. Alongside breaking news and ongoing analysis, we have produced original investigations such as those into allegations of abuse of Palestinian prisoners and Israel’s use of bunker buster bombs and in-depth documentaries including the award-winning Life and Death in Gaza, and Gaza 101.”
No comments:
Post a Comment