How to survive breaking broadcast rules in a war zone

Britain’s media regulator Ofcom has found that the BBC documentary “Gaza: How to Survive in a War Zone” broke broadcasting rules by materially misleading audiences, ending a months-long investigation that began after the controversial program was pulled from the BBC iPlayer service in February.

The ruling, announced on Friday, found what Ofcom described as a “serious breach” of its rules and will require the BBC to broadcast a statement of Ofcom’s findings on BBC Two at 9pm at a date to be confirmed.

An Ofcom investigation found that the documentary’s failure to disclose that the 13-year-old narrator’s father holds a position in the Hamas-run administration constituted a material breach of rules requiring reality shows to provide the public with accurate information. The narrator, Abdullah, is the son of Ayman al-Yazouri, who served as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture.

“This means that the audience did not have important information that would have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided,” Ofcom said in its findings.

The regulatory body stressed the seriousness of the violation, noting that trust is fundamental to the relationship between broadcasters and their audiences, especially for public broadcasters such as the BBC. Ofcom said: “This failure could have eroded the very high levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC reality program about the war between Israel and Gaza.”

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