Has the BBC learned nothing from the Balen Report?

Opinion

What happened with the children of Gaza documentary is not an example of bias but of a failure of editorial systems or BBC bureaucracy — or both. There must be no repeat of the Balen Report saga.

The BBC is in trouble over its Middle East coverage — yet again.

This time, of course, the row is over the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone and the fact that its 14-year-old narrator was the son of a senior official of Hamas, a banned terrorist organisation.

On Tuesday, when BBC chairman Dr Samir Shah and director-general Tim Davie turned up at the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, away from the rhetoric surrounding the documentary, there was a consequential announcement. Shah called for an independent, wider inquiry into the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East and, by implication, its independence and impartiality — or lack of it.

The instant reaction of many will be: not another inquiry — and into such a fraught area when matters such as clarity, independence and balance are beyond difficult to ascertain.

There is an absolute need for such an inquiry, although setting out its terms of reference and personnel will be a monumental challenge. And as the talking continues over many months and possible years, the killing in the Middle East will continue.

Learnings from the Balen saga

As with most matters involving the Middle East and coverage of its conflicts, there is history here — in this case, the Balen Report, which carries echoes of Charles Dickens’ Court of Chancery in Bleak House.

Malcolm Balen, a senior BBC journalist, was asked in 2004 by then BBC director of news and current affairs Richard Sambrook to review the BBC’s Middle East coverage for signs of bias.

After looking at and listening to hundreds of hours of coverage, Balen produced a comprehensive 20,000-word report. We can only assume it was comprehensive, because the report was not published and — much worse — the BBC used up considerable numbers of BBC licence fees in legal fees to prevent its publication.

In fact, the BBC fought freedom of information requests through the courts on a point of principle that you might think rather narrow. Its case was that the report was an internal document designed to inform its journalism and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The ultimate irony, according to widespread internal rumours, was that Balen actually found no evidence of systemic bias in the BBC’s Middle East coverage.

So the BBC may have spent a lot of our money and pulled down a lot of unnecessary opprobrium on its head in defence of arguments closely related to angels and pinheads.

There must be no repeat of such performances and a starting point for any new inquiry should be the full publication of the Balen Report as a sort of informed introduction to the issues involved.

It goes without saying that, if such a new report is forthcoming, it should be published in full.

Perception problem

The scale of the challenge involved can be seen from reactions to the Gaza documentary.

More than 500 people have complained about the programme and Lord Grade, former chairman of the BBC and now chairman of Ofcom, has warned the communications regulator will get involved if necessary.

But more than 1,800 people, including many from the media and artistic community, have complained about Davie’s decision to pull it from iPlayer — at least for now.

The effect of this decision is more than a little unfortunate. Those who first heard about the documentary because of the rapidly spreading row after its broadcast cannot now look to see whether the furore is justified or not. They have to rely on published facts and comments rather than their own eyes.

This may not be quite as big a deal as first appears, if the main issue is merely one of perception rather than reality.

Obviously, it was daft to hire the son of a Hamas official and possibly pay the family what appears to be a relatively small sum, precisely because of the perception problem.

It might have been the best documentary ever made about the sufferings of the children of Gaza — and yet it would have been hopelessly tainted by those involved in its making.

In fact, that is the greatest tragedy of all in broadcasting terms: that the reality of life for thousands of Palestinian children, having received far too little attention, should have been overshadowed by flaws in programme-making.

As United Nations agencies have pointed out, more than 13,000 young people are believed to have died in the Gaza enclave. Some critics have argued that they have not received the same recognition as the smaller — but equally tragic — number of Israelis who died.

That said, reports that the BBC repeatedly asked the independent production company involved, Hoyo, for the background of those involved but allegedly did nothing when there was no answer is astonishing.

Time for a fresh look

Everyone involved has known from the outset that this was a potentially controversial project and therefore one that merited particular care and attention.

What happened is not an example of bias but of a failure of editorial systems or BBC bureaucracy — or both.

Without information on such background checks, the programme should not been broadcast, even if it meant pulling it at the last minute.

This is one of those cases where the ongoing internal inquiry will want to establish how far up the BBC’s editorial pyramid information about potential problems actually got to.

By chance, Shah has a background in news and current affairs, but it would be wrong of him to ask to see controversial programmes in advance or try to block shows before transmission. Then BBC vice-chairman Lord Rees-Mogg tried that in 1985 over an Ulster documentary with disastrous consequences.

But surely someone senior in BBC editorial should have viewed the programme before transmission and asked enough questions to set the alarm bells ringing?

As the BBC chairman told MPs on Tuesday, what had been revealed was “a dagger at the heart of the BBC’s claim” to be impartial and trustworthy and the BBC board was determined to get to the bottom of what happened and “take appropriate actions”.

And after the long gap since the Balen Report, it’s time for a long, careful, independent look at the BBC’s coverage of the Middle East — not least to silence some of its disputatious critics.

Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.