Lord Mann said “heads should roll” in the wake of revelations about the controversial Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone documentary.
BBC director-general Tim Davie (Image: Getty)
The BBC is facing fierce criticism after its leadership, including director-general Tim Davie, was accuased of refusing to take antisemitism training, despite growing concerns over bias in its reporting of the Gaza conflict. Lord Mann, the Government’s independent adviser on anti-Jewish hatred, revealed that he had personally offered training to senior BBC executives on multiple occasions since taking up his role in 2019.
However, he said figures at the top of the corporation, including Director-General Tim Davie, repeatedly turned down the offer, despite increasing scrutiny over the broadcaster’s coverage of Israel and Hamas. In a scathing rebuke, Lord Mann accused the BBC of failing to take allegations of antisemitism seriously, saying there was an “arrogance at the top” of the organisation. He called for senior executives to be sacked for approving a controversial documentary that sparked outrage among Jewish groups.
The programme, Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone, was meant to depict children’s experiences in the conflict but was pulled from iPlayer after an internal review found “serious flaws.”
The BBC faced massive criticism after it emerged that the documentary’s narrator was actually the son of a Hamas government official, raising concerns over impartiality.
Hamas, which is banned as a terrorist organisation in the UK, was responsible for the October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel—the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Lord Mann said: “Heads should roll. And the heads that roll shouldn’t just be the little heads… No, let’s get rid of some at the top, would be my view.”
Lord Mann believes ‘heads should roll’ at the BBC (Image: PA Archive/PA Images)
Lord Mann added that he had personally raised the issue of antisemitism training with Mr Davie and other senior BBC figures but was ignored.
He stressed: “They should have done it. More fool them. They haven’t.”
The peer warned that if no senior figures were held accountable, he would push for a full public inquiry into the BBC’s handling of antisemitism complaints.
He continued: “If heads don’t roll, there will be an inquiry. They won’t be allowed to sweep it under the rug.
The narrator of the film was in fact the son of a Hamas official (Image: BBC / Hoyo Films / Amjad Al Fayoumi)
“I think they have got an ignorance. They have got, I think, particularly, a generational problem of people who really don’t understand it.”
His comments follow a damning report by lawyer Trevor Asserson, which alleged that the BBC breached its own editorial guidelines more than 1,500 times during its reporting on the Israel-Hamas war.
The BBC dismissed the report’s findings, stating: “We do not think that its methodology leads to reliable conclusions.”
Former BBC executive Danny Cohen has previously described the broadcaster’s coverage of Israel as an “institutional crisis,” while BBC chairman Samir Shah has acknowledged that the fallout from the Gaza documentary was a “dagger to the heart” of the corporation’s credibility.
