The U.K.’s media regulator Ofcom found the BBC’s documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” violated its rules by “materially misleading” viewers by not disclosing that the film’s young narrator was the son of a Hamas official.
The government regulator found the documentary’s lack of disclosure “meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.”
The 59-minute documentary, which focused on four people navigating their lives in Gaza as Israel maintained its retaliatory campaign over Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which killed roughly 1,200 people, was commissioned by BBC Current Affairs for the BBC Two channel and its iPlayer. The BBC pulled the documentary in February after its review found that the film’s 13-year-old narrator, Abdullah Alyazouri, was the son of Gaza’s deputy agriculture minister.
“Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC,” Ofcom said. “This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war. ”
The BBC was told it had to air Ofcom‘s findings during the 9 p.m. hour on BBC Two. The network released its results of an internal investigation in July, finding that the documentary breached its editorial guidelines on accuracy by failing to disclose the narrator’s father’s job. The report did not find any other editorial breaches of the documentary, including impartiality, or that any outside groups had “inappropriately impacted on the programme.”
“Regardless of how the significance or otherwise of the Narrator’s father’s position was judged, the audience should have been informed about this,” Peter Johnston, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews, wrote in his report.
A BBC spokesperson said the ruling was “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.”
“We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom’s decision in full,” the spokesperson said. “We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised.”
The BBC pulled the well-received documentary in February after independent journalist and researcher David Collier revealed the connection between Abdullah Alyazouri and his father, Ayman Alyazouri The revelation led to dozens of Jewish journalists demanding that the BBC take the documentary down until an “independent investigation” into the “serious nature of these concerns” took place.
Some pro-Palestinian activists took issue with the decision, saying the film helped humanize the people in Gaza who were under fire in Israel’s campaign. More than 67,000 people have been killed since Israel began its strikes, according Gaza’s Ministry of Health. (The Hamas-run organization does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, but its figure has been widely used as the most accurate estimate of the war’s fatalities, including by the United Nations.)
“This documentary humanised Palestinian children in Gaza in a way that gave valuable insights into what life is like in this horrific warzone day in, day out,” Chris Doyle, the director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Middle East Eye.
