Robert Stuart, a tenacious blogger, has been picking away at a scab the BBC would rather leave firmly in place.<\/p>\n
His forensic research<\/a> concerns an edition of the BBC’s flagship investigative current affairs\u00a0show Panorama called Saving Syria’s Children. It was broadcast more than three years ago, as many in the media were trying to push the British government into intervening in Syria with bombing raids against the Syrian government \u2013 in a move that would effectively have bolstered ISIS and al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria.<\/p>\n The Panorama programme was one important piece of evidence advanced for such intervention. The footage it included\u00a0was broadcast in several different formats, and purported to show the victims of a chemical weapon, or possibly incendiary, attack by the Syrian military on a school. The BBC reporter for Panorama was Ian Pannell.<\/p>\n From the outset, there were concerns about the authenticity of the footage, as I noted in a piece<\/a> on my own blog in October 2013.<\/p>\n But Stuart’s sustained research and questioning of the BBC, and the\u00a0state broadcaster’s\u00a0increasing evasions, have given rise to ever greater concerns about the footage. It looks suspiciously like one scene in particular, of people with horrific burns, was staged.<\/p>\n Rather than confront these concerns and dispel them, the BBC and Pannell have tried a mixture of going to ground, stonewalling and misdirection. That has included trying to remove the footage from social media sites where it had been available.<\/p>\n Even by the BBC\u2019s current dismal standards, its\u00a0behaviour has been, on the best view, outrageously arrogant. Remember that the BBC is a publicly funded broadcaster. And yet the corporation appears to think it is not even minimally accountable to the British taxpayers who fund it.<\/p>\n In a fascinating new development, a leading freelance TV and radio producer Victor Lewis Smith \u2013 and one with a rare conscience and backbone \u2013 has intervened after viewing the footage.<\/p>\n He raised troubling questions with the BBC about the Panorama programme and threatened to tear up his contract<\/a> for a forthcoming radio comedy pilot unless the corporation provided satisfactory answers.<\/p>\n For the first time, the state broadcaster was flushed out of its hiding hole. First, it tried more misdirection, telling him that Ofcom had reviewed the programme and sided with the BBC. But the Ofcom decision was about an RT investigation into the Panorama\u00a0programme\u00a0\u2013 note that Ofcom has hardly been impartial in its treatment of RT \u2013 and not a ruling on the veracity\u00a0of the BBC footage, which Ofcom admitted<\/a> it was not in a position to assess.<\/p>\n When Lewis Smith didn\u2019t roll over, as the BBC clearly expected, the corporation offered up Panorama\u2019s editor, Rachel Jupp. She would talk to Lewis Smith to placate him. But she had second thoughts and cried off. Lewis Smith then upped the stakes by asking for Panorama\u2019s rushes and again threatened to terminate his contract.<\/p>\n