BBC press officers refused to promote Emmy-winning Oct 7 documentary

BBC publicity staff refused to promote an Emmy-winning documentary about the victims of the Oct 7 massacre in Israel, The Telegraph can disclose. The film, Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again, reconstructed the events at the Nova music festival, where 364 Israeli civilians were murdered, numerous attendees subject to rape and mutilation, and 44 were kidnapped and taken hostage. The film was commissioned by the BBC , whose in-house publicists turned their back on it “due to its subject matter”, it is alleged.

They were allowed to “abandon their duties” by the BBC, according to Lucie Kon, a Jewish producer who later received a £400,000 payoff after being made redundant following a complaint she made about anti-Semitism. Instead she had to hire a freelance publicist to organise a premiere, which included a question-and-answer session with survivors of the massacre. The film went on to win the outstanding current affairs documentary award at the News and Documentary Emmy Awards in New York.

Ms Kon told The Telegraph the press team refused to get involved in publicity because the Oct 7 film was “too political”. BBC sources insist the real reason was because the material it contained was so harrowing that staff asked to be excused. The BBC has pledged several times to stamp out anti-Semitism within the corporation, but Ms Kon previously told The Telegraph she was repeatedly the victim of anti-Semitic language after the Oct 7 terrorist attacks in 2023.

She complained that she had been told Zionists like her were “evil”, that if Hamas were to be referred to as terrorists then Israel should be referred to as a terrorist state, and that it was “disgusting” that Rishi Sunak had visited a Jewish school after the Oct 7 attacks to offer his support as prime minister. She was later made redundant. After threatening the BBC with an employment tribunal for harassment and victimisation, she was paid more than £400,000 in an out-of-court settlement.

In the weeks after the Oct 7 terrorist attacks Ms Kon suggested that the BBC should commission a documentary about them. She said a colleague told her that if the project went ahead it would have to “contextualise” the Oct 7 massacre and empathise with what had driven the perpetrators. She was also told she could not be in charge of such a project, as she was “too partial” and had “skin in the game”, she said, but the BBC relented and allowed her to produce the film, which reconstructed the events at the Nova music festival using Hamas videos and video shot by the terrorists’ Israeli targets on their mobile phones.

In documents submitted by Ms Kon as part of her proposed employment tribunal against the BBC, Ms Kon detailed what happened when she tried to arrange a premiere for the film. The document says: “In August 2024, [two members of the] press team refused to promote Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again... due to its subject matter. “The subject matter of the film was the recounting of the tragic events at the Nova Music Festival, where a celebration turned into a massacre... this was the subject matter which [they] refused to promote.

“The respondent [the BBC] permitted [them] to abandon their duties in this way and for this reason. As a result of this, the claimant had to manage the logistics of the film premiere herself, with support from a freelance publicist.” Ms Kon told The Telegraph that the in-house publicity team also claimed the subject matter was “too political” and later claimed they were too busy to promote it. She said: “There was nothing political about that film.”

She added: “They were in a panic – they said ‘we’ve just realised what this involves, this is what your film is about’. They were really nervous. They didn’t say exactly what they were nervous about, but they were like ‘this is a really big deal’.” A BBC source told The Telegraph that the press team’s decision was not political, and that managers acceded to the team’s request to be excused from their duties because of the “harrowing” nature of the content.

The source added that it was not unusual for outside publicists to be used by the BBC. Ms Kon hired a freelance publicist to help her arrange media coverage and the premiere of the documentary, which was held at a Jewish cultural centre on the advice of BBC security advisers and the Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism unit, who said other proposed venues were not secure enough. According to the employment tribunal claim, another BBC staff member criticised the decision to hold the premiere at the Jewish cultural centre, “which [they] asserted without any rational basis was ‘Islamophobic’”.

The colleague refused to support or attend the premiere, Ms Kon says. The BBC source said the colleague in question did not describe the decision as Islamophobic, but merely expressed an opinion that it should be at a neutral venue, and that lots of BBC staff attended and supported the premiere. At the end of the premiere, Emma Barnett, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme presenter, who is Jewish, hosted a panel discussion with Yariv Mozer, the documentary’s director, and survivors of the massacre.

The documentary, which was a co-production between Paramount+ in the US, the BBC and the Israeli cable TV channel Hot, was praised as “astonishing” by the New Statesman and “moving” by the Guardian, while Sean Penn, the actor and director, described it as “a truly must-see film” and the singer Barbra Streisand said it was “powerful, heartbreaking and amazing”. It won its Emmy in June 2025, where it was also nominated for outstanding editing.

Its Emmy win was not mentioned in the BBC’s annual report covering 2025, even though other awards including Emmys were listed and celebrated. A BBC spokesman said: “We are grateful that Ms Kon acknowledges that the BBC is not institutionally anti-Semitic. “The BBC processes did not uphold any of Ms Kon’s allegations of anti-Semitism. However, the outcome did acknowledge there were shortcomings, and the personal impact on Ms Kon. “We would like to acknowledge that Ms Kon was a valued member of staff with many years of dedicated service to the BBC.”