From the Times:
The BBC has agreed to pay £400,000 to an award-winning Jewish documentary-maker who says she was subjected to antisemitism by colleagues and forced out of the corporation, according to reports.
Lucie Kon, 57, who has won an Oscar and an Emmy, alleged that she was victimised after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel in 2023 and that colleagues had described Zionists like her as “evil”, The Telegraph reported.
Kon, who has family in Israel, said colleagues told her that “if you want to call Hamas terrorists then you have to call Israel terrorists too” and urged her to consider what had driven Hamas to carry out the attacks.
She also alleged that she was prevented from overseeing a proposed documentary about October 7 because, as a Jew, she was considered “too partial”.
Kon, who worked at the BBC for 22 years on programmes including Panorama, Today and Storyville, was an executive producer of Mr Nobody Against Putin, which won the Oscar this year for best documentary feature.
She said her religion had never previously been an issue at work. After October 7, however, “it was like having Jew stamped on my forehead”, she said. Kon lodged a formal grievance about her treatment, but an internal BBC investigation did not uphold her complaint. An appeal was also unsuccessful.
She said she was instructed to remain at home for months after raising concerns and was effectively sidelined. Her position was later made redundant during a restructuring, and she was unsuccessful in applying for a similar role.
Kon subsequently brought unfair dismissal proceedings against the BBC, which agreed to pay her £400,000 without admitting liability, according to The Telegraph.
“I think I became a problem. I think I made too much noise about being a Jew inside the BBC,” she said. “The BBC says, bring your authentic self to work. And I did. And I lost my job as a result.”
She was instrumental in getting the BBC to secure the We Will Dance Again documentary, about October 7th. From the Telegraph:
During 2025 Ms Kon spent months in hospital being treated for anorexia, while the redundancy process dragged on. Ms Kon’s role was replaced but the headcount stayed the same. Ms Kon, who says the new role was her old job with a different name, was turned down when she applied for it.
In the middle of all that, the Oct 7 documentary We Will Dance Again won the Emmy in New York. Ms Kon had to pay for her own flight, sleep on a relative’s floor in Manhattan, and pay for the Emmy that has her name inscribed on it.
She was even robbed of the chance to celebrate her success because she had been told she was not allowed to speak on behalf of the BBC, and when she went on stage with her team to collect the Emmy, she was “worried, because the director thanked me and it was being livestreamed”.
When the BBC produced its annual report this year, it listed awards the corporation had won in the previous 12 months, but not Ms Kon’s Emmy.
She believes that, by then, the BBC had “made a choice to get rid of me”.
“I had gone from being a respected, well-liked journalist, commissioner and executive producer to being a Jew at the BBC,” she says. “I had gone from feeling proud to being ashamed.
“I was undermined, I was pushed into a corner. I felt like the life was sucked out of me.”
Are we surprised?
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