The UK’s media regulator, Ofcom, has determined that the BBC violated broadcasting rules by featuring the son of a Hamas official as the narrator in its documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.” The decision follows an investigation that found the BBC failed to disclose Abdullah’s father’s affiliation with Hamas, which was deemed a significant breach of trust with the audience.
The BBC has accepted Ofcom’s findings and is committed to implementing new measures to prevent similar issues in future projects. The documentary, which followed four young people aged 10-24 living in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war, faced backlash after investigative journalist David Collier revealed that Abdullah was the son of Hamas’ deputy minister of agriculture. The BBC issued an apology and pulled the documentary from its streaming platform, vowing to add more detail to the film before its retransmission.
An internal investigation found that the BBC was unaware of Abdullah’s lineage prior to the documentary’s broadcast, but three members of the production company Hoyo Films did know that the boy’s father was a Hamas official. The probe criticized the broadcaster for not being sufficiently proactive with its due diligence and for a lack of critical oversight of unanswered or partially answered questions regarding the documentary ahead of broadcast. The review claimed that the use of the Hamas-linked narrator did not influence the content of the film but said the inclusion of the boy was