London Calling: Inside the BBC World Service - The Battle for Truth

Documentary series which goes behind the scenes at that most venerable of institutions, the BBC World Service. This edition follows journalists from the BBC's Arabic Service as they cover the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese group, Hezbollah, in the summer of 2006. The Arabic correspondent in Israel, Ahmad Budeiri, has to struggle against his own Palestinian background and convictions in his task of covering the Israeli side of the story. On the other side of the border in Lebanon, Nada Abdel Samad is stretched on all fronts as her country falls apart in an intense bombing campaign. Reporting on the ground is made more difficult by the hostile reaction she gets from people who distrust the BBC, suspecting it of bias towards Israel, and increasingly turning to al-Jazeera instead. The World Service need to take their own dramatic steps towards television if they are to beat the competition. Producer Wissam Sayegh is on holiday visiting his family in Beirut when the war breaks out, but quickly finds himself working round the clock as a reporter. The physical danger puts a huge strain on his emotions, and when he’s one of the first journalists to reach the bombed village of Qana, it’s harder than ever to remain impartial. Mouna Ba arrives in Britain for the first time in her life, to work at Bush House. She’s from Morocco and along with other recruits from all over the world, she has to undergo rigorous training in the BBC’s rules of balance and impartiality, tricky ground for coverage of that hot potato of a subject, the Middle East.