BBC sanctioned by Ofcom for Gaza documentary that breached Broadcasting Code

Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom has sanctioned the BBC for breaching the Broadcasting Code in its Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone documentary after the corporation failed to disclose a narrator’s links to Hamas.

The film, which was made for the BBC by the independent production company Hoyo Films, was removed from BBC iPlayer in February after it emerged the child narrator, Abdullah, is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who has worked as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture.

The regulator concluded that the failure to disclose this 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”.

In light of the breach, the BBC will face sanction by being ordered to broadcast the Ofcom findings.

In February, a letter addressed to BBC director-general Tim Davie, sent by public figures including Friday Night Dinner actress 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.

It also said that Hoyo Films had known about the narrator’s father’s position in the Hamas government but had not told the BBC before the broadcast.

In July, the BBC published the findings of its review and said it had breached one of the corporation’s editorial guidelines on accuracy, by failing to disclose information about the child narrator’s father.

Mr Johnston’s report said: “Regardless of how the significance or otherwise of the narrator’s father’s position was judged, the audience should have been informed about this.”

The corporation acknowledged it had ultimate editorial responsibility for the programme as broadcast, and in September Mr Davie said: “It was a bad mistake, I think the report also says Hoyo Films not disclosing that information was important to us.”

The documentary breached rule 2.2 of the Broadcasting Code which is “designed to deal with content that materially misleads the audience so as to cause harm or offence” and not with “issues of inaccuracy in non-news programmes”.

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.”

This is the first time the BBC has been sanctioned since April 2017, and follows several other examples, including in 2009 when Russell Brand’s lewd phone call on BBC Radio 2 breached the rules.

GB News was sanctioned by Ofcom in 2024 and lost a High Court bid to temporarily block the action after the regulator claimed a Q&A with Rishi Sunak broke impartiality rules.