The BBC will be forced to broadcast a statement live on television after UK media regulator Ofcom ruled that Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone was “materially misleading.”
The BBC has already acknowledged that it was a serious editorial failing that the documentary, which premiered on February 17, was narrated by the child of a Hamas minister, without this fact being declared to audiences. Now Ofcom has determined that it broke UK broadcasting rules.
In a ruling on Friday, the regulator concluded: “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. ”
In its ruling, Ofcom added: “Breaches of the [broadcasting] code that have resulted in the audience being materially misled have always been considered by Ofcom to be among the most serious that can be committed by a broadcaster.”
The BBC will be required to air a statement of Ofcom’s findings on BBC Two in the primetime 9PM slot. A date for the statement is yet to be determined by Ofcom.
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 … 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.”
How to Survive a Warzone was produced by Hoyo Films, an independent production company run by Emmy and BAFTA-winning filmmaker Jamie Roberts. Overseeing the film for the BBC were Joanna Carr, head of current affairs, and commissioning editors Gian Quaglieni and Sarah Waldron.
The BBC’s internal review of the film, led by complaints chief Peter Johnston, concluded that it misled audiences by failing to declare English-speaking narrator Abdullah Al-Yazouri’s Hamas links, but said there was no evidence that the proscribed terror group “inappropriately impacted on the programme.”
Al-Yazouri’s connection was not declared to the BBC prior to the film screening, even though Hoyo was aware for eight months about Al-Yazouri’s family. After examining 5,000 documents and 150 hours of raw footage, Johnston “does not consider” that Hoyo “intentionally misled” the BBC during the production process, but said the company “bears most responsibility for this failure.”
Notably, the report said three members of Hoyo “did not at any stage prior to the broadcast of the programme” share Al-Yazouri’s Hamas links. This was despite a BBC editorial policy advisor questioning Hoyo, weeks before broadcast, about whether “due diligence” had been done on the 13-year-old boy’s Hamas connections. “Critics may raise something,” the note said.
Hoyo acknowledged that this question, posed on January 12, should have been answered. The production company told Johnston’s review that it struggled to keep up with the “bombardment” of requests and emails from the BBC, and the note from January 12 slipped through the net unintentionally. Furthermore, Hoyo’s position was that the Hamas minister was responsible for agriculture and, therefore, did not hold a “political or military position” within the group that would make him a target for Israel.
The BBC said in July that it would take “fair, clear and appropriate action” against individuals embroiled in the incident, but declined to comment on whether anyone would lose their jobs. The BBC said it had “no current or future planned commissions” with Hoyo.
BBC News, the department responsible for How to Survive a Warzone, has published an “action plan” following the error. This included increased editorial checks, hiring a new executive responsible for “long form output,” and embedding a BBC News executive producer inside the production team on high-risk documentaries produced externally.
BBC chair Samir Shah has previously said the How to Survive a Warzone film was a “dagger to the heart” of the corporation’s impartiality and trustworthiness.
