Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has issued a sanction against the BBC for a breach of its broadcasting code, following the corporation’s failure to disclose a narrator’s links to Hamas in its documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.
The film, produced for the BBC by independent company Hoyo Films, was removed from BBC iPlayer in February. This action came after it emerged that the child narrator, Abdullah, is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who has served as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture.
Ofcom concluded that the omission of this crucial information “was materially misleading” because “it had the potential to erode the very high levels of trust audiences would have expected in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war”.
As a consequence of this breach, the BBC has been ordered to broadcast Ofcom’s findings.
In February, a letter addressed to BBC director-general Tim Davie, sent by public figures including Friday Night Dinner actor Tracy-Ann Oberman, urged the BBC to pull the documentary from iPlayer, expressing concerns about the “editorial standards of this programme”.
Later that month, the BBC announced that an initial review of the programme had identified “serious flaws” in its making and said a full fact-finding review was to be conducted by the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews, Peter Johnston.
In July, the BBC published the findings of its internal review into the matter and said it had breached one of the BBC's editorial guidelines on accuracy by failing to disclose information about the child narrator’s father.
A BBC spokesperson said: “The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston’s review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC’s editorial guidelines on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom’s broadcasting code.
“We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom’s decision in full.
“We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised.”
