BBC Gaza Doc Broke Broadcasting Rules by Misleading Audiences, Says U.K. Regulator Ofcom

An investigation from British media regulator Ofcom has found that the BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone broke broadcasting rules for being “materially misleading” to audiences.

Ofcom released its findings — described as a “serious breach” of Ofcom rules — Friday, and demanded the BBC broadcast a live statement on the investigation results in due course.

The public broadcaster came under fire in February this year when one of the 13-year-old subjects in the film about the Israel-Gaza war, a young boy called Abdullah Al-Yazouri, was found to be the son of Hamas’ deputy minister of agriculture. The BBC pulled the doc from its streaming service, BBC iPlayer, and apologized for the “unacceptable flaws” in airing the program. 

Ofcom said in a statement that the program’s failure to disclose the narrator’s father held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading. “It 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 findings continued: “Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC. 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.”

A separate review commissioned by the BBC was also ordered and made available in July. In that report, 5,000 documents were identified and considered from a 10-month production period, as well as 150 hours of material filmed during production.

Peter Johnston, independent of BBC News and current affairs, also concluded that the program breached a guideline on accuracy, which deals with misleading audiences. While the review did not consider that production company Hoyo Films intentionally misled the BBC about the narrator’s father’s position, it finds the independent production company bears “most responsibility for this failure.” The BBC is also partially to blame, that investigation also determined, though no other guidelines were breached.

A BBC spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday that 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,” their statement ended.

BBC director-general Tim Davie said Johnston’s report identifies “a significant failing in relation to accuracy. We will now take action on two fronts,” he said in July, “fair, clear and appropriate actions to ensure proper accountability and the immediate implementation of steps to prevent such errors being repeated.” This was actioned in the form of harsher scrutiny of narrators on current affairs programs and conducting extensive background checks when working with independent production companies. The broadcaster has no current plans to work with Hoyo Films again.

The furore over the doc extended to some of the industry’s top creatives, with soccer star Gary Lineker, actors Riz Ahmed, Khalid Abdalla, and Miriam Margolyes, and director Mike Leigh among the hundreds of signatories of an open letter calling for the BBC to reinstate the program on iPlayer. “Beneath this political football are children who are in the most dire circumstances of their young lives,” the letter read. “This is what must remain at the heart of this discussion. As programme-makers, we are extremely alarmed by the intervention of partisan political actors on this issue, and what this means for the future of broadcasting in this country.”