The BBC breached Ofcom’s broadcasting code with a Gaza documentary that was narrated by the son of a Hamas Government official, the regulator has found. The Telegraph has more.

Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, narrated by 13 year-old Abdullah Alyazouri, was categorised as a “high-risk” project by the corporation.

The BBC has been accused of “catastrophic failures” after it emerged that the child was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, the Hamas-run Government’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture.

The corporation, which refuses to refer to Hamas as terrorists, has faced a number of accusations of anti-Israel bias since the October 7th 2023 attacks on Israel. It recently apologised for referring to the Hamas massacre as “escalations”.

Ofcom, the broadcasting watchdog, found that the BBC’s failure to disclose the narrator’s connections to Hamas was “materially misleading”.

The broadcasting code was breached in a manner that 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”, it said.

The watchdog stated that the breaches, in which the audience was “misled”, were “among the most serious that can be committed by a broadcaster”. It said the BBC must broadcast an admission of its failings during prime time on BBC Two.

Soon after the corporation had broadcast the documentary in February, it emerged that the purportedly neutral narrator was the son of a Hamas Government official.

The programme, at first deemed ‘clean of Hamas’, was pulled and the BBC began an internal investigation it had come to be broadcast.

In July, the BBC published a review that found the programme, produced by Hoyo Films, breached editorial guidelines. Tim Davie, the Director-General, admitted that the BBC had failed in its duties.

The review found that some staff at Hoyo Films were aware of Mr Alyazouri’s position with the Hamas-run Government but believed he was no longer employed, and did not pass on this information on to the BBC.

It also said the BBC had not shown sufficient curiosity towards the family background of the child narrator.

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