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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Dropsight. I'm Murtaza Hossain. Today we're running an episode from our friends at Question Everything, a podcast produced by KCRW and Placement Theory. Earlier this year, the BBC faced significant pressure and criticism after it refused to air a film that documented Israel's destruction of Gaza's healthcare system. The BBC had originally commissioned the film from two journalists who set out to document the Israeli destruction of hospitals and killing of medical workers. The BBC's decision to pull the film was scandalous as the British network continues to face criticism of its reporting on the Gaza genocide. In today's episode from Question Everything, producer Sophie Cassis documents exactly what happened during the film's production, giving us an insight into the edits, delays and pressure faced from the BBC. The full film called Doctors Under Attack can be watched@zetao.com here's the episode from Question Everything titled the Film the BBC Wouldn't Air.
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B
It was April 2024 and Ramita Navai and Ben De Per were reporting on Israel's attacks on hospitals and healthcare workers in Gaza. The Israeli military had just completed a two week raid of the largest medical complex in Gaza, a Al Shifa hospital. Doctors, patients and people who were taking shelter inside the building were killed. The facility was in ruins. Targeting hospitals and medical personnel intentionally. That violates international law and it could be a war crime. And as the weeks went on, Israel appeared to be doing this more and more. Ramita and Ben are veteran journalists. They wanted to get a team on the ground in Gaza to see what was happening to healthcare facilities and get it out to the world. They partner with the BBC to produce an hour long documentary film which will give the story a huge audience and resources. This is Ramita.
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C
At the time I absolutely believed in the BBC. There are great people at the BBC and I still believe in it as an organization, but I really, really believed in it fully then.
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B
But as Ramita and Ben started to reach out to people in Gaza, to local journalists who could help them report there because Israel doesn't let outside reporters in as well as to sources to doctors, medics and others.
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C
All these Palestinians told us that they thought the BBC would never run our film and we really had to try and persuade them to talk to us because they didn't and don't trust the BBC. And I really persuaded people. You know, there was a case where I got on the phone to persuade someone. We were in the west bank and I said, listen, I'm going to pass you over. And Ben spoke to him, what, 45 minutes, an hour, telling him there was no way the BBC would not run his interview.
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D
He was convinced the BBC never would.
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B
That's Ben, in case it wasn't clear.
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D
And I was quite shocked he felt that way, but actually he was 100% right.
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C
They all were.
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B
From KCRW and placement theory, this is Question Everything. I'm Brian Reed. Today, the battle to get a story told. Two journalists bring back evidence of war crimes in Gaza. They've got the facts and the footage, but the BBC refuses to air the film. Having your stories killed, it's part of being a journalist. We kill plenty of stories here, sometimes because the reporting doesn't bear out, sometimes because news moves on and a story loses its relevance. Sometimes the story is just not good enough. In fact, when I worked at this American Life, there was a line in our employee handbook that said, killing a story that's good but not great is a victory. So I am a believer in killing stories, but sometimes killing a story can be a scandal and even immoral. That's the question raised by what happened to Ramita and Ben. Stick around for the story of how two journalists fought to get their urgent reporting onto one of the largest news outlets in the world and lost. There's been tons of criticism of how big media organizations are covering Gaza, but it's rare to get the chance to peel back the curtain and see what exactly is happening on the inside of those organizations and how political pressure is influencing the specific decisions being made by people within these huge bureaucracies. Decisions about which stories run, which what's covered, the language that's used in stories that do run and the stories that are killed. That's exactly what we get to see with this reporting by our producer, Sophie Kazis. About the BBC. Here's Sophie.
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E
I've been following how journalists have been covering Gaza for a while, and one day, while scrolling on social media, I came across a post from Ben about the documentary he produced with Ramita. He asked, why is it so difficult to make documentaries about the biggest and worst assault on civilians this century? The BBC had dropped their film and I wanted to know why, what that process looked like from the inside. Ben and Romita had both worked in news and documentary for decades, racking up awards and accolades. Ben's a British journalist who worked at top outlets, including for 10 years as news editor at one of the BBC's main competitors, Channel 4. Ramita's a British Iranian journalist who's reported from over 40 countries, often in hostile environments. She's a big enough Deal that she appeared as herself in a scene with Mandy Patinkin in an episode of Homeland.
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C
Come on, Sol, make some news. It's been three weeks. At least give us a sense of how it's going so far.
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D
It's going. From what I understand, there's a nice.
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B
Lamb kaja on the menu tonight.
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C
Okay, how about off the record then?
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E
So they're both long in the tooth, as Ramita puts it, which helped them get reluctant sources to talk to them.
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C
The Palestinians who were mistrustful of the BBC. The reason they gave interviews ultimately was because they trusted us as individuals.
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E
They started reporting on the ground a year ago in September 2024. Ramita, the lead reporter and narrator of the film, and Kareem Shah, the director, went to Egypt, Israel, and the occupied West Bank. And they partnered with two Palestinian producers who were in Gaza, Jabba Bhadwan and Osama Alashi. Jabba and Osama both worked on a previous film for Ben's company, earning Jabba six awards for this new film. Jabba and Osama start going inside hospitals and interviewing doctors who are working under some of the most difficult and frightening conditions imaginable. There are shortages of medicine and. And other basic supplies, not to mention fuel, food, and clean water. Sometimes hospital staff work in complete darkness with bullets flying, bombs falling all around them.
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D
We are in the theater, in the operating room, full darkness, no water, no electricity. But we have a hero. Surgeons in Gaz.
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E
Jabba and Osama, the Palestinian producers in Gaza, are working in these same conditions, risking their lives. To gather the footage, the team starts observing tactics that the Israeli military is repeating at hospital after hospital. Here's Ramita.
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C
One of the first things that happens when the Israeli army sets its sights on this hospital is that it goes for the infrastructure. So solar panels will be hitting all the facilities containing oxygen. Canisters will be hit. They'll go for the energy supplies. Specific wards will be hit. You know, maternity wards, children's wards, cancer wards. You know, they're very targeted. Everybody will be forced to evacuate.
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D
They attacked a very populated area. Dead bodies of these children see massacre, massacre.
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C
Quadcopters and drones. Armed drones would target anyone in scrubs inside the hospital.
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E
And Ben and Ramita, they started getting other very disturbing tips.
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C
We heard that doctors were going missing. Soldiers were taking Palestinian doctors away from checkpoints, sometimes by name. They were taking them away from hospitals in Gaza. There were cases of doctors being taken from operating theaters.
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E
And who were you hearing that from?
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C
It was a group of international workers who have been working in Gaza for very many years who have helped train Gazan doctors. And they were being told by their colleagues that doctors and healthcare workers were going missing.
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E
So their team starts trying to verify this.
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C
I remember I was having a conversation with a Palestinian doctor who had recently returned from Gaza to London, and he had been at the Netsarim checkpoint, and he had witnessed anyone in scrubs being taken aside. He was really quite scared.
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They get interviews with several doctors who describe being detained by Israeli forces, some for as long as four months, but none ever get charged with any crimes.
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C
Another very clear pattern. Every single one of them was tortured.
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Ramita and Ben's team, they obtain images of black sites where detainees, including doctors and healthcare workers, were held.
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C
These are makeshift locations where there's obviously no judicial oversight. So, you know, football stadiums. One was a former UN school. Men are stripped, they're held in the open. I mean, there was one man, he was too traumatized to be interviewed on camera, and he'd been held at a backslide for three months.
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E
The journalists find that some healthcare workers have been held in detention for more than a year. Others have died in detention, like orthopedic surgeon Adnan Albersh. Ramita spoke with a doctor who'd been detained alongside Albert.
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C
What did you think when you heard Adnan died in prison?
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E
Died?
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B
He was murdered.
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E
He was killed. He says. I don't like the word died. He was murdered. He was killed. In one way or another, it was as a result of torture. Israel claims that armed Palestinian groups were using the hospitals for military purposes, and that's why they targeted the facilities. Hamas has denied those allegations, and the United nations found there's not enough evidence to support Israel's claims. In fact, in December 2024, while Ben and Ramita were working on their film, the UN released a report showing Israel's attacks on the hospitals were part of a pattern that they replicated across Gaza, destroying almost every hospital there. But official reports, they're not as visceral and personal as the documentary team's footage. Ben and Ramita are working hard to get their film out as soon as possible. And by that December, when the UN report comes out, they have a first cut. They show it to their editor, everything seems fine. They make some changes and get a second cut ready. It's all very standard. The next phase is script edits. They say that's when they start noticing the first signs of trouble.
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D
When we got into the edit, there was quite a lot of pushback on some of the sharper points of the journalism.
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E
Ben and Romita worked with editors, producers and other journalists, plus a guy representing BBC's editorial policies. They don't want to give those names because they say those people were just following orders from above. We'll get into that later.
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D
They started saying, well, that's a very strong thing to say. What would Camera say about that? And what would a guy called David Collier think?
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Camera is a media watchdog that aggressively calls out reporting it deems to be anti Israel. Same with David Collier, a vocal pro Israel critic of the BBC. Ramita and Ben were shocked that their editors mentioned these names.
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D
And I said, well, why do we care about what they think?
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C
It was the first time in my 22 year career of covering dozens and dozens of countries that ever in an editorial meeting a lobbyist is named or a lobby group has been named. And really I found it extraordinary that the BBC were allowing pro Israel lobby groups to influence and inform their journalism.
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E
Do you have any examples of those words or phrases they didn't want you to use?
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C
Well, we fought over the word ethnic cleansing, even though it was attributed to the un. They had an allergic reaction to experts using the word genocide. There was another word, let me.
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E
Forced disappearance and forced disappearance of doctors. And what did they want you to say instead?
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D
Missing.
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C
Yeah, missing. Missing, yeah.
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D
And then they started saying, we don't really like using Amnesty anymore.
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E
Amnesty International, the human rights group. During her reporting, Ramita had interviewed an Amnesty expert on Israeli black sites in Gaza. Ben and Ramita say the BBC did not want them to cite Amnesty as a source.
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D
I was like, what, you don't trust them? You don't trust Amnesty International? No, no, it's just easier if we don't use them. And then ultimately in one meeting, they said, we don't view the UN as an independent organization anymore. And at that moment I said, I'm sorry, what did you say? And then I googled BBC and UN reports and there were hundreds of reports of Bangladesh, India, you know, China, whatever. I said, well, you do trust them on this. And I think what's happening here is Israel doesn't trust the United Nations.
- [14:53]
E
They also say they had to push to include Palestinian experts. One of many fights in the editing room.
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D
The discussions and the arguments and the painful reworking of the same script over and over again took three times as long as any other film I've ever done. You had to fight for every line and had to justify every line. And it strained every sinew of our relationship with the BBC to get there as well.
- [15:23]
E
But for Ben, the most striking issue had to do with what's called right to reply. That's giving people or groups a chance to defend themselves against public criticism or allegations made in reporting. In the uk, it's a legal obligation under their broadcast code, but it's not unique to Britain. It's standard practice in journalism. We do it for every episode on this show. I've done it for this story. I reached out to the BBC with the details of Ben and Ramita's account and in a bit I'll let you know what they told me. I've also reviewed documentation to corroborate what Ben and Ramita told me.
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D
Having run a national News program for 10 years, I was very across when you have to use the right to reply.
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E
Ben knows the rules of right to reply up and down. He and Ramita say they sent Israeli authorities every allegation made in their film, specific questions about hospital strikes, tactics used to target Palestinian doctors, and the answers they got back weren't substantive or backed by evidence. It was a lot of blanket statements like this one, which essentially dismisses the premise of the film. We act in full accordance with international law and outright reject the allegation of deliberately targeting medical facilities and medical personnel. Ben and Ramita say the BBC wanted them to include rebuttals like this from Israel over and over again.
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D
And what was happening was that the BBC would say, well, they said. They responded here. And I said, we've already said that three times. We can't be saying this five times because actually that's not balance. The balance is shifting towards the Israeli side here because you're just giving them free airtime to. To spout whatever they want to spout.
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C
The extent to which the BBC would accept Israeli military statements as fact, unquestioningly in the name of right to reply.
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E
The BBC considers itself the world's most trusted international news broadcaster because it's the.
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B
Pursuit of truth that gives us our calling.
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E
And they really lean into that in their promos.
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B
The fight for truth is on.
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E
Despite the branding, for years, the BBC has gotten a lot of criticism, both for being too pro Israel and for being not pro Israel enough.
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D
The BBC would say, neither side trusts us. We're attacked by both sides. Israel says that we are pro Palestinian in our coverage. Palestinians say we're pro Israeli and say therefore, we must be doing something right.
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E
I've heard a lot of journalists say the same thing, often as a source of pride. But independent researchers at Glasgow and Cardiff universities looked at 20 years of BBC coverage and found that the BBC consistently favored Israeli narratives over Palestinian ones.
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D
They have been intimidated. They have been frightened of being called anti Semitic. They have been frightened of the fear of not being balanced. And they have been bullied by bosses in the news industry who frankly know better. And they're doing it at a time when the rate of killing and the atrocities are off the scale.
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C
And I would say in really simple terms, our job as journalists is to tell the truth, to get the truth out. And journalists are becoming too scared now to do that.
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E
And when you're in these meetings, you're presenting the script like, what relation do they have to your film?
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D
Well, look, I have to say this, that the people who are saying it in the room, I don't think they're saying it themselves. You have these weird arguments with people in a room, would get very heated. Then you go down the pub and they'd say, you're right about absolutely everything. Of course, I don't believe that, but I know what I have to do to get this through. And so I did feel for some of the people who were arguing that. But. But it was really the dissonance between what people actually personally feel and what they are being forced to say and do at the BBC is just shocking. It felt like these were people representing views from above. They were carrying out the orders of others because they weren't convinced by what they were saying.
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E
I asked Ben who he's talking about when he says views from above.
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D
That guy is Tim Davy. He was the head of PR at the BBC at the moment. The BBC is not run by a journalist.
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Tim Davey, the BBC's director general and Editor in chief. He's been at the organization since 2005 in various roles including director of marketing, communications and audiences.
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And before that, he used to be the head of PR at Pepsi and is otherwise known in the industry as Pepsi Boy.
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E
Pepsi Boy, A moniker he got because of his time as VP of Marketing at the soda company. As the top guy at the BBC, now he's the person who has to answer for criticism. He's faced questions in Parliament about how the network covers Gaza and met with pro Israel lobby groups, which infuriates Ben. Ben says with Davy at the top, the BBC is more concerned about PR than journalism. And after months of fighting for their journalism, Ben and Ramita find themselves in a showdown with the BBC over their film.
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C
Ben said, this is the maddest f ing meeting of my effing career.
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E
Finally, Ben and Ramita's film Doctors Under Attack is slated to air after rounds and rounds of Fact checks, bites over language and sources, the BBC's legal and compliance reviews, plus another review from Ben's own lawyer, just in case. The documentary is set to run in February 2025, but just when Ben and Romita think it's going to be released, the BBC decides to put out another film first, how to Survive a War Zone, about children living in Gaza. The BBC airs that film on February.
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D
17Th and almost immediately it was identified as having an omission from it.
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The omission Ben's talking about has to do with the narrator, a 13 year old boy living in Gaza. It turns out he's the son of an agricultural minister in Gaza's Hamas run government. That information was not in the film when it was released and it becomes.
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D
An absolute shitstorm in this country like no other story would. But ministers talk about it in Parliament.
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With Tim Davy, the BBC's director general, in the hot seat.
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D
As far as you can go, it's fair to assume if the family of a senior mass leader is paid, that that money goes into the. Let's just deal, let's deal with the facts. The independent production company, to represent them fairly, they have written to us very clearly that they say no money has gone to Hamas. It becomes a huge story about the misreporting, even though amongst journalistic communities and about half the country, the real story is that the BBC has been misreporting Gaza.
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E
The BBC pulls that other film off its digital platforms and launches an internal investigation. Ben and Ramita are worried that this will delay their film again at a time when the situation in Gaza is getting worse, with Israel bombing more hospitals, killing and detaining more healthcare workers. So they go to the number three guy at the BBC and ask him not to delay their film while this other film is being investigated. His name's Jonathan Monroe, the global director of BBC News.
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D
And they immediately started saying, no, absolutely not, that's not gonna happen. This is an important film and it's a vital piece of public interest journalism is what they kept saying. And it'd be like, oh great, yeah. And then we'd get to the pub and have a, a pint of beer.
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E
Those pints of beer are premature. Their film gets delayed.
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C
Now we need another round of checks and delayed.
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D
Yes, we need to go through the script again.
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E
As they wait for final sign off.
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D
Someone'S going on holiday to Yorkshire and that person's really vital or someone's at the dentist that week.
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E
The BBC says the film never received final pre broadcast sign off, but Ben and Ramita say the film was scheduled to run six different times. All the while, Ramita is messaging their collaborators and sources in Gaza saying, it's going to run soon. I promise it's going to run soon. And Ramita really believed it was going to happen when she says Jonathan Monroe gave them word that it would run at the end of April.
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C
I had to go back into the recording studio to do the last minute rereads. That's when I really thought, okay, it's happening now. This time it's really happening.
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E
And then Ben says he gets a call from Jonathan. The somewhat bizarre message.
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D
They called us and said, we know that we've told you that your film has not been delayed because of the other film in the investigation. That is still the case that it wasn't delayed because of that, but it now is delayed because of the investigation.
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E
So even though they were told that the investigation into that other film was not the reason the BBC was delaying their air date from this point forward, the investigation was the reason for the.
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D
Delay, at which point we laughed and so did half the people from the BBC.
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E
I emailed Jonathan for comment, and the BBC sent a response on his behalf saying they weren't going to get into the details of who was involved at which stage. And by the way, the investigation into the other film ultimately found that while it did violate the BBC's editorial guidelines by not disclosing that the narrator was the son of a Hamas government official, overall, the omission did not influence the content of the documentary in any way.
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C
Ben started emailing all the bosses saying, we demand that you either release our film as soon as possible. It is a matter of urgency. This is an investigation into war crimes, or release the film back to us.
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D
And really, our top line on that was, this is about the contributors to the film having their stories told because they trusted us. You sit someone down and you get them to tell the worst moments of their lives. When they. They wake up having been struck by a drone and the nurse is holding the dead body of their daughter, they break down in tears. And when you are told that as a documentarian or someone in news, you are really taking on the most painful part of someone's life and they are trusting you that you're going to tell the world. And that was really our point to the BBC, that you cannot delay this film because it contains such searing testimony. You don't have the right to do that because of some other film.
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C
In the end, I stopped emailing and whatsapping and sending messages to our contributors. Because it was so awful having to time and time again say, I'm really sorry it's been delayed. How can I say your stories have been delayed? Because the BBC is worried about the reaction to another film that has nothing to do with you. I mean, it was just madness. It was just unethical and immoral. And also, journalists found out that our film had been put on hold. And so journalists started snooping around and started asking questions.
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D
Right then, yeah, the story was reported. The BBC gave a statement saying we would get this film out as soon as possible. It's an important film.
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E
Hundreds of industry figures, including Susan Sarandon, write a letter to the BBC calling for the immediate release of Ben and Romita's film and accusing the BBC of political suppression. By now it's May, three months after the film was initially supposed to air in February. And finally, Ben says they get called in for a meeting with Jonathan Monroe and a few others. He and Ramita go to the meeting.
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C
They turned around to me and they said, listen, there is a way forward, Ramita, hear us out. And the way forward is that we're gonna take you off as the reporter and you're going to become a subject in the film. You will become a contributor to be interviewed alongside Palestinians so you can explain your journalism for full transparency. And at that point I was so shocked. And I remember looking at Ben and Ben was laughing because, I mean, it's such an absurd idea. And I said, do you realize how insulting this is? Do you realize what you're asking me to do? And then I think they then thought that they would try to appeal to my ego. So then they said they set out kind of their list of kind of news trinkets to sell to me to placate me. They said, but, but Ramita, we're gonna have you on all sorts of radio programs. They said, which, first of all, you do that anyway. When a film comes out, you have a whole PR team that gets you on all these programs. And to be honest, quite tiresome, right? But you have to do it. It's not something I ever relish doing. So I was stunned that they thought that that would be enough to placate me. At that point. Ben said, this is the maddest effing meeting of my effing career.
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E
When asked why they were suggesting this, Ben says the execs in the meeting explain they're worried about narrators who aren't BBC employees because of the controversy with the 13 year old narrator of the other film. So they suggest hiring an Actor instead of Romita to narrate the documentary.
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C
I said, so you're comparing me to a child who is the child of a member of the Hamas government. And they actually said, ramita, we, we assure you, we are not comparing you to a Hamas child. I'm laughing now, but I was, I was really, really angry. You know, this is the first time in my career I've ever encountered this type of prejudice, I would call it, because there's no way, if I was, you know, a purely English, white, let's say middle aged man, I mean, with my level of expertise and my standing in the industry, there's no way they would have asked for that person to become a subject in his own film. I mean, there's just no way.
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E
They also brought up Romita's Twitter posts, saying some appeared one sided. Romita says the BBC had already gone through all of her social media and asked her to remove some retweets about human rights abuses from international organizations like Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. She says the retweets didn't violate BBC policy, but she agreed to remove them anyway.
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C
I've never been asked to un retweet tweets about the Taliban in Afghanistan or against the Iranian regime. You know, this was quite extraordinary. And I also reminded them I knew what was at play, that they were worried about the optics of an Iranian woman who they presumed to be Muslim, investigating Israeli war crimes. I knew that was happening. And in the meeting I reminded them that the Iranian regime has called me an imperialist Zionist spy, that I've spent over 20 years of my career investigating Islamist groups such as ISIS and different Shia militias across the region. So this is absurd that all of a sudden I'm seen as partial. Right at the end of the meeting when Ben kept pushing them, Ben kept asking them, have there been any complaints made against her? No. Ben just exploded and said, we're not changing a thing.
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D
By the way. There were people I'd known for one person I'd known for two decades and used to work alongside. So when we were walked out of the building, the person who'd been part of the meeting was apologizing previously saying, I'm sorry, that was a really ridiculous idea and we shouldn't have ever presented it.
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E
So then what happened after that meeting?
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C
After that meeting, I wrote a letter. I thought, right, first of all, I want this on record. I want on record what happened in that meeting. I was so angry.
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E
Ramita sends her letter all the way up the chain to the top two people at The BBC Director General, Tim Davy, and to the CEO of News, Deborah Turness. She demands to know why the BBC would demote her from reporter to interview subject. Two days later, they hear from the bosses.
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C
It wasn't long after that letter that Ben received an email saying, we agree now you can have the film back.
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E
The BBC was telling them they were not going to run the documentary. It was a huge blow, but Ben and Romita could have the rights back and hopefully air it someplace else.
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C
And they had conditions.
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E
One, the documentary could not be shown in the uk, though the BBC would reserve the right to show clips and to interview Romita for their news services. And two, they were asked to sign what Ben called a gagging clause limiting what they could say about the film.
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D
I, or anyone who bought the film, would not be able to say that it had been a BBC film, even though we had been making it with the BBC for a year. And also they would not be able to say that the BBC didn't run it. I just thought, why would a journalist sign an NDA? Why would I sign an NDA, which is palpably, provably and openly untrue.
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E
In the middle of these negotiations, Ben's speaking on a panel at the Sheffield Documentary Festival and he goes public about what's happening with their film. There's no recording, but people wrote about it. Ben said, the BBC has utterly failed. The best journalists in the world are working inside the BBC and they are being stymied and silenced. That same morning, Ramita is a guest on a BBC radio show. She was invited on as an expert to discuss Israel's bombings in Iran that had just happened.
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C
I was asked how Iranians are feeling about this. So I updated everybody on the situation and what was actually happening on the ground. And then I gave my analysis and I told the reporter, I said, iranians are pretty fearful because they're seeing what Israel is doing in Gaza and it's killing Palestinians, it's ethnic cleansing and it's behaving like a rogue state. Something along those lines.
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E
The recording of this is not available online, but we found a transcript and her precise words were that Israel had, quote, become a rogue state that's committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing and mass murdering Palestinians.
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C
And the presenter tried to correct me and said, you're just giving your opinion. And so I told him, no, this isn't my opinion. I've been investigating this for nearly a year and a half for the BBC. This is based on my work.
- [35:55]
E
Why was that a problem?
- [35:57]
C
Well, good question. Why was That a problem? I was giving a comment as an expert in this field, giving analysis after 22 years of covering the Middle east and covering Iran.
- [36:11]
E
The next day, the BBC issues a public statement saying it's dropping the film. The BBC wrote yesterday, it became apparent that we have reached the end of the road with these discussions. But Ben and Ramita say it wasn't yesterday. They'd been negotiating for weeks to get the rights to their film back. The BBC statement went on to say, 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. So I want to pause on the phrase perception of partiality. What are we supposed to make of.
- [36:51]
C
That perception of partiality? They're literally saying they care more about how people perceive what's being said rather than the truth. That's madness.
- [37:05]
D
It shows that they can no longer recognize what partiality is. And it actually means that its interpretation of impartiality actually obstructs the truth and constructs a different truth.
- [37:18]
E
I sent the BBC a long list of questions after my interviews with Ben and Romita. I gave them their right to reply questions like, did any BBC editor or lawyer advise against citing Amnesty International or the un? And were the filmmakers asked to replace terms like ethnic cleansing and genocide? Their spokesperson said it's not uncommon for presenters to point out that genocide has a legal definition and that Director General Tim Davy was not involved in discussions about language choices for the film. Many of my other questions they didn't answer. Instead, they focused on Ramita's comments on the BBC's radio show, writing in part that after she 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 impartiality. They go on to say 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.
- [38:34]
C
They said that they were dropping the film because of my comments.
- [38:41]
E
What did you tell the journalists in Gaza? You were working with your sources in Gaza, the medical professionals whose stories you were telling. What were those conversations like?
- [38:52]
D
Well, look, with the journalists, they're trying to stay alive. They're trying to feed their families. They're trying to move to safety all the time.
- [39:02]
C
Osama and Jabba, two producers, they weren't surprised. They just shrugged it off. This is what they always thought would happen anyway, so I was working up to this moment of like, I'm so sorry, and, yeah, there's no reaction. They just weren't surprised. One of them, who was sending me messages last night, who's in Gaza City right now, Osama, who's really living in fear of his life. He thinks she's gonna die. So, yeah, so me texting them, telling them, oh, I'm really sorry, I don't know if the BBC's gonna run it. I don't, you know, at this point, like, who gives a shit? That was their reaction and their sources.
- [39:45]
E
Some were really angry, Others, like, one doctor just said, told you so.
- [39:52]
D
The mistrust of the BBC in Gaza was now sort of absolute.
- [39:57]
E
After seven months of battling the BBC, Ben and Romita did get the rights to their film back in full. They did not sign the gag clause and on July 2, their film aired in the UK, not by the BBC, but by its competitor, Channel 4, where Ben had worked as news editor for a decade and where Ramita had spent much of her career. It's also available internationally through Mehdi Hassan's new outlet, Zateo.com, that's where I watched it. Ben says they haven't received a single claim of inaccuracy or complaint. How did you feel when the film finally aired?
- [40:36]
C
We went round to Ben's house to watch. Was quite emotional, wasn't it, Ben?
- [40:44]
D
And you know what the best thing was? It actually, it was actually a good film when all you've been doing is fighting about the subjects of the film rather than the substance. And it ultimately went out in the right place, I suppose. But I would have loved that film to go out on the BBC and the BBC should have run it. And somehow the BBC has tangled itself up and it will hang its head in shame.
- [41:10]
E
You both co wrote a piece about this whole experience for the observer and you ended by writing. As news and current affairs journalists, we do not want to be on the right side of history. We want to be on the right side of. Now. I'm wondering if you could tell me what that means to you.
- [41:32]
C
That's Ben's brilliant line.
- [41:34]
D
Thanks, Ramita. That's quite nice of you to. Well, a lot of people use that phrase quite glibly now, I think to say you're on the right side of history means that history will decide whether this is a terrible thing. You know, it's a terrible thing. Because you can see it. And so I just found it an annoying phrase because this isn't a film we've made for people to watch in the future and say, oh, you were right, it's a film for people to say, my God, this is happening.
- [42:08]
C
I also think we will look back in horror at how we have covered this.
- [42:21]
E
When Ben and Ramita started making their film, around 500 healthcare workers had already been killed in Gaza. By the time the film came out, six months later than it was originally meant to, that number had risen to over 1500. Today it's over 1600, and there's not a single fully operational hospital in all of Gaza.
- [43:02]
B
That's Sophie Kazis, one of the producers of Question Everything. After Ben and Ramita's documentary was axed, more than 100 BBC employees signed an open letter to management decrying the decision and saying they'd witnessed bias in favor of Israel. In the newsroom, they wrote. All too often it is felt that the BBC has been performing PR for the Israeli government and military. You can read the BBC's full statement they sent to us over at our substack question everything.substack.com where I give you a look behind the curtain of our reporting and editorial discussions here on the show. Subscribe A friendly reminder to Please rate and review Question Everything. Share it with a friend. These things truly help us grow. Today's episode was produced by Sophie Kazis, with help from our associate coordinating producer Emily Meltare. It was edited by Managing Editor Kevin Sullivan. Marisa Robertson, Texter was our fact checker for this week. The rest of our team includes producer Zach St. Louis and contributing editor Jen Kinney. Our sound designer Brendan Baker mixed this week's show. Matt McGinley composed our music. Our executive producers are me, Brian Reed and Robin Simeon. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seiple, Tejal Algemera, Natalie Hill and Jennifer Farrow. We'll see you next.