When you spend close to half-a-million pounds on a documentary, you want it to make an impact. The Telegraph tells us that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness was in the audience for a screening of "Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone" on January 30th, alongside invited journalists who might build up publicity.
A very helpful BBC source has told The Telegraph “She saw it in her capacity as CEO of BBC News, knowing it is a finished product, rather than with a compliance eye on it. She would have assumed the due diligence checks had already taken place.” Hmm. We've been told that the Current Affairs team communicated with the independent producers in writing, and there were unanswered questions about the antecedents of the boy-narrator.
There were 19 days between the preview and the transmission; journalist David Collier claims it took him four hours, using reverse image search and social media, to find the boy's father, a junior minister in the Hamas administration.
Am I missing something here? My understanding is the boys father is Deputy Minister of Agriculture. It's a bureaucratic position, not military. Yes this should have been mentioned but I can't see how his job materially changes the experiences of life in Gaza as shown.
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