BAFTA TV Awards 2026: BBC-shelved Gaza documentary wins top prize

A documentary based on Israel’s military attack on the hospitals situated in Gaza won a BAFTA TV Award for Current Affairs. The award was long-awaited by the BBC over what the broadcaster described as “impartiality concerns”.

The documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, made by Basement Films and fronted by journalist Ramita Navai, covered all the allegations of attack on the hospitals and medical staff during the ongoing war in Gaza through testimonies by Palestinian doctors and healthcare staff. The film was eventually broadcast by rival network, Channel 4.

The film was initially scheduled to be broadcast in February last year, but the documentary was delayed while the BBC said it was investigating another programme, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. The film had breached editorial guidelines on accuracy after failing to disclose that its narrator was the son of a Hamas official.

In June, the BBC announced that, following a review, it had decided not to broadcast Gaza: Doctors Under Attack. “We have come to the conclusion that broadcasting this material risked creating a perception of partiality that would not meet the high standards that the public rightly expect of the BBC,” the broadcaster said at the time.

The decision was met with widespread criticism from campaigners, journalists, and public figures. It prompted more than 600 industry insiders, including Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon, to write an open letter to Tim Davie, the BBC’s then director general, demanding he release the film immediately.

“Every day this film is delayed, the BBC fails in its commitment to inform the public, fails in its journalistic responsibility to report the truth, and fails in its duty of care to these brave contributors,” the letter stated. “No news organisation should quietly decide behind closed doors whose stories are worth telling. This important film should be seen by the public, and its contributors’ bravery honoured.”

Accepting the award at Sunday night’s Bafta TV Awards in London, Navai used her speech to criticise the BBC for refusing to broadcast the film. “We refused to be silenced and censored,” she said on stage, while thanking Channel 4 for airing the documentary. Navai also said the findings presented in the film were “the findings of our investigation that the BBC paid for but refused to show”.

Executive producer Ben de Pear also aimed the broadcaster during the acceptance speech, questioning whether the BBC would acknowledge the programme’s Bafta win during its delayed broadcast of the ceremony.

The controversy surrounding the BBC’s Gaza coverage became one of several crises that overshadowed the tenure of Davie, who resigned in November after a series of scandals and editorial disputes, which included a $10 billion defamation suit by US President Donald Trump.