EXCLUSIVE: The BBC is no longer developing a documentary about the L.A. wildfires that was being directed by Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone‘s Jamie Roberts.
Deadline revealed several months back that the broadcaster faced a dilemma over whether to push on with the show while engulfed in scandal around Roberts’ failure to disclose that a young narrator in Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was the son of a Hamas minister.
Today’s BBC review into the How to Survive a Warzone debacle said the broadcaster “has no current or future planned commissions with [Roberts’ production company] HOYO Films,” which a BBC spokeswoman confirmed means the L.A. wildfires documentary will no longer go ahead.
It was no surprise that the BBC had been keen to make a premium doc about the wildfires, a terrifying natural disaster that generated headlines for days and caused 200,000 to evacuate their homes. A BBC Panorama titled The Day Los Angeles Burned aired in March, while rival Channel 4 aired fast-turnaround doc Inferno: LA on Fire from ITN Productions.
Roberts is a highly-skilled doc maker whose BBC film Ukraine: Enemy in the Woods won a BAFTA earlier this year.
After today’s review, the BBC and HOYO both said they will continue working together to see if “we can find an appropriate way to bring back to iPlayer the stories of those featured in [How to Survive a Warzone],” a point reiterated in an all-staff email from BBC News boss Deborah Turness that we have seen this afternoon.
Today’s report found that How to Survive a Warzone breached a BBC editorial rule on accuracy, but the corporation stopped short of revealing whether any employees will be disciplined over the failure.
Peter Johnston’s review did not consider that Hoyo “intentionally misled” the BBC during the production process, but said the company “bears most of the responsibility for this failure.”
