“They broke me” – BBC pays Jewish producer more than £400,000

The British broadcaster BBC has paid a Jewish television producer more than 400,000 pounds (around 477,600 euros) in compensation following allegations of anti-Semitism.

The payment to former BBC editor Lucie Kon was agreed after proceedings for alleged unfair dismissal, the Daily Telegraph newspaper (like WELT, owned by Axel Springer) reported on Monday.

The public broadcaster said that an internal investigation had not substantiated any of Kon's anti-Semitism allegations. However, “lapses” were identified. The BBC acknowledged that the events had had a personal impact on Kon and described her as a valued employee.

Others did not want to let her direct a documentary about the Hamas massacre because of alleged “bias.” After a formal complaint, she was increasingly ostracized and eventually fired. “They tried to prevent me from doing my job because I am Jewish,” Kon told the newspaper.

"The BBC abandoned me, isolated me and drove me to the brink of madness. They broke me," she continued. According to her account, her everyday work life changed fundamentally with the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. “A BBC journalist who happened to be Jewish became a Jewish journalist at the BBC,” she said. “It was as if ‘Jewess’ had been stamped on my forehead.”

Kon also reports derogatory statements made about Jewish employees. At times she retreated to a toilet to escape a situation. “The BBC is not full of anti-Semites, but it has an anti-Semitism problem.”

Kon worked as managing editor for the BBC international documentary series Storyville. She co-directed the Oscar-winning documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin and executive produced the Emmy-winning film We Will Dance Again, about the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival. In the massacres on October 7, 2023, the Islamists killed 1,221 people in southern Israel and kidnapped 251 people as hostages to the Gaza Strip.