BBC News' CEO Deborah Turness' 'detail' will enrage the UK's anti-BBC lobby in the Jewish community even further.
Hardly a surprise the BBC is in such a mess over its Middle East coverage, when you see that this person, Deborah Turness, is in charge of @bbcnews
— Jake (@fishcake555) July 17, 2025
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Followed by a spectacularly inept blocking attempt by a BBC spokesman, “Deborah Turness was answering a question about how we described the father of the narrator in our Warzone film. She did not imply that Hamas are not a single terrorist organisation.” Oh yes she did.
On the basis of that 30-second clip, yes she did imply that Hamas is not a single terrorist organisation. Not just imply, state.
ReplyDeleteBut Hamas ISN'T a single terrorist organisation, an army of ruthless militants. It's a political organisation with a military wing, much like the relationship between Sinn Féin and the IRA. It's been the functional government of Gaza since 2007. Does that make Abdullah Al-Yazouri's father simply a blameless bureaucrat? Nothing to see here, move along? No; and the BBC were wrong in failing to ensure viewers knew the narrator's background. But any competent telling of this story has to encompass the distinction Deborah Turness is talking about: Gaza is complicated.
Perhaps there was a desire to simplify the storytelling; to have a child cut through the difficult politics to the humanitarian calamity beneath - a child to symbolise innocence? But I'm guessing children grow up bloody quickly in Gaza.
Where Ms Turness may have gone wrong is in not keeping a closer eye on the programme herself. There can be no doubt this is one of the most high-profile, controversial films the BBC has ever produced. So why was it not overseen by those journalists with the most experience and authority?