When the Board of Deputies met BBC Director-General Tim Davie and senior BBC executives on 20 March, in the wake of a series of editorial disasters including the withdrawal of a documentary narrated by the son of a senior Hamas minister, we set out a list of clear actions the BBC should take to tackle issues of bias in its coverage, and improve its treatment of Jewish staff and contractors.
We set a deadline of Passover (12 April) for an update on these actions.
Since that date, our respective teams have been discussing these measures, and we understand that the BBC will seek to do the following:
– The BBC has committed to launching an independent Thematic Review into its coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict and is considering both the terms of reference and the timing of that review. We have asked for this to include the BBC Arabic service, which has been of particular concern.
– A full fact-finding review into the making of the highly problematic programme ‘Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone’, is currently underway and the Board has asked for a report on the conclusions of this review at the earliest opportunity.
– We have been assured that issues around the use of language and translation, including the policy around translating the words ‘Yahud/Yahudi’, are being considered in the course of these two reviews.
– The BBC has confirmed it has facilitated training on antisemitism over the past year with a range of editorial colleagues, and it is considering plans to roll out training more widely. Given serious concerns about the health and well-being of Jewish staff at the BBC, we will be engaging with the BBC to ensure that, going forward, the quality and content of this training is what the Jewish community would expect.
We are continuing to press our BBC counterparts on the following essential items:
* Calling Hamas and Hezbollah what they are: “proscribed terrorist organisations”.
* Means of rapidly addressing serious editorial failures and occasions where reporters are found to have egregiously breached its rules of impartiality and/or antisemitism.
Phil Rosenberg, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said:
“As we reach the Passover deadline we set the BBC leadership, we can acknowledge that there appears to have been some progress on the issues we raised. As yet, this has not gone as far or as deep as will be required to fix the problems that we have identified.
“In order to regain public confidence, and the confidence of its Jewish staff, the BBC leadership must move firmer, further and faster to address these concerns. We will continue to engage, robustly where necessary, to ensure that the content and culture of our national broadcaster is worthy of its place of responsibility in our society”.