The BBC on Friday said that it has settled with a Jewish family who survived Hamas’ 7 October attacks in southern Israel after the British news outlet filmed inside their destroyed home
The BBC on Friday said that it has settled with a Jewish family who survived Hamas’ 7 October attacks in southern Israel after the British news outlet filmed inside their destroyed home. The reporting team filming the home at that time included senior correspondent Jeremy Bowen, who entered the Horenstein family’s home in the days after the attacks in 2023.
On Friday, a spokesperson from the BBC confirmed the settlement. “While we do not generally comment on specific legal issues, we are pleased to have reached an agreement in this case,” the spokesperson explained. Tzeela and Simon Horenstein and their two young children survived the surprise attack. The family was left untouched when a door that the Hamas militants tried to blast open twisted and jammed.
At the time the news crew filmed the wreckage along with the family’s friends and relatives, they did not know if they were alive. Shortly after the incident, Tzeela Horenstein told the Jewish News that not only had the militants tried to break into their home and murder them, “but then the BBC crew entered again, this time with a camera as a weapon, without permission or consent”.
The BBC agreed to pay £28,000
According to AFP, the BBC had reportedly agreed to pay the family £28,000. “This second intrusion had left the family feeling as if everything that was still under our control had been taken from us”, told local reporters at that time.
It is pertinent to note that the US President Donald Trump has also filed a defamation lawsuit against the BBC seeking $10bn in damages over the way it edited his 2021 speech before a mob of his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
When the controversy started swirling, the BBC Director General, Tim Davie, announced his resignation in November over the edit. In October this year, the British media regulator Ofcom also ruled against the BBC over a documentary that featured narration by a boy who was later revealed to be the son of a Hamas official. The broadcaster had failed to disclose that link. Ofcom maintained that the omission constituted “a significant source of deception”, further fuelling accusations of editorial bias.
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