I’m a former BBC newsreader – Gaza is the reason I resigned
Hind Rajab in normal times
Karishma Patel writes in The Independent on 5 March 2025:
There’s one day that stands out to me in the many months of covering Gaza as a Middle East specialist at the BBC. I stood in front of my team, pitching – for the second time – the story of a five-year-old girl trapped in a car with her murdered relatives: Hind Rajab.
I had been following the Red Crescent’s constant updates as they tried to save her. The BBC department I worked for chose not to cover her story that day. It was only after the Israeli military killed her, shooting the car 300 times with her inside, that our public broadcaster chose to say her name. And when it did, the article headline didn’t even make clear who had done what. It shied away from coming to a conclusion.
The BBC failed Hind. And it has failed Palestinian children again in pulling the documentary ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’, following external pressure over a 13-year-old narrator being related to a deputy agriculture minister in the strip, which is administered by Hamas. It had the option of keeping the version with a line of context on this, ultimately standing by the truth at the heart of the film: that Israel is harming Palestinian children.
This decision prompted me and more than 1,000 others – including Gary Lineker and Miriam Margolyes – to sign an open letter condemning the move.
Yesterday, director general Tim Davie and chair Dr Samir Shah faced the Culture, Media and Sport Committee over the organisation’s work, where MP Dr Rupa Huq asked if they had thrown “the baby out with the bathwater” in removing the documentary. While the BBC says there were “serious flaws” in how the film was made, it has failed to acknowledge an overall lack of editorial integrity in covering Gaza. During the session, Tim Davie agreed on the need for an independent review into the BBC’s overall Middle East coverage – a move that’s sorely needed.
I was at the BBC for five years, starting out as a researcher and eventually becoming a newsreader and journalist. In that time, I covered Covid-19 outbreaks, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hindu nationalism in India. But it was in covering Gaza that I saw a shocking level of editorial inconsistency.