What Went Wrong With The BBC Gaza Documentary?

Newscast

BBC

Politics, News

4.4 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today, we discuss the findings of a BBC report which found that the documentary Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone had breached editorial guidelines.

The BBC previously pulled the documentary from iPlayer after it was uncovered that the 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official. The report says the production company Hoyo Films bears most of the responsibility for the failures. Hoyo Films said it took the reviews findings "extremely seriously" and said it "apologises for the mistake that resulted in a breach of the editorial guidelines".

Another report looking into BBC show MasterChef has found that 45 allegations against presenter Gregg Wallace have been upheld. Wallace said in response that some of his humour and language "missed the mark", but added: "I never set out to harm or humiliate. I always tried to bring warmth and support to MasterChef, on screen and off." Adam is joined by BBC News Culture and Media editor Katie Razzall and Culture reporter Noor Nanji.

And, President Trump has threatened “very severe” tariffs against Russia if there is no Ukraine deal within 50 days. Adam speaks to Caitriona Perry, Chief Presenter for BBC News.

You can now listen to Newscast on a smart speaker. If you want to listen, just say "Ask BBC Sounds to play Newscast”. It works on most smart speakers.

To get your tickets for Newscast live in Edinburgh - https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/bbc-newscast-podcast You can join our Newscast online community here: https://tinyurl.com/newscastcommunityhere

Get in touch with Newscast by emailing [email protected] or send us a whatsapp on +44 0330 123 9480.

New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bit.ly/3ENLcS1 Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. It was presented by Adam Fleming. It was made by Jack Maclaren with Shiler Mahmoudi and Anna Harris. The social producers were Jada Meosa John . The technical producer was Ben Andrews. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:04.6	Hello, it's been a day of potential danger for the BBC as two long-awaited reports about two big controversies landed in everyone's inboxes.
0:15.7	One was about Greg Wallace and his time as a presenter on MasterChef, which attracted lots of complaints
0:21.9	from people who worked on that program. The other was the forensic examination of what went
0:27.3	wrong about that documentary filmed in Gaza by an independent production company, where the
0:32.7	child who was narrating it turned out to be the son of a hamass official. Lots of questions were asked about both
0:39.3	those situations. Today we got some answers. We'll discuss what they mean on this episode of
0:44.7	Newscast. Newscast from the BBC. He has just compared me to the fat controller. Did I say
0:51.6	that? I can't believe I said that. Next question. This is R for the
0:56.1	benefit of Earth. I'm not personally a huge Sabrina carpenter fan. I don't think I'm being rude.
1:01.7	I like landscapes. Take me down to Downey Street. Let's go have a tour. Blimey. Hello, it's Adam in the
1:08.2	newscast studio. And the first two stories we're going to cover on today's
1:11.7	episode are related to the BBC, although they are quite different. And then we'll end with a very
1:17.3	different story, which is about Donald Trump changing his mind about how much military support
1:22.9	to provide to Ukraine, and also a toughening up of his opinion about Russia. So the first story
1:30.5	and the first one related to the BBC is about that documentary broadcast earlier this year,
1:35.6	filmed in Gaza and presented and narrated by a young boy who became the subject of a lot
1:41.8	of media scrutiny. And the person who's been doing that scrutiny for us today is the BBC's media editor.
1:47.1	Katie Razl, who's here.
1:48.2	Hi, Katie.
1:48.9	Hi, Adam.
1:49.9	So the backstory to this was it was this documentary filmed in Gaza,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.