BBC Gaza Documentary Breached Ofcom Code
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.
Worth reading in full.
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BBC Verify marking its own homework.
Defund the British Broadcasting Commentariat.
High levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC programme about their favourite terrorists? ‘Scuse me while I piss myself laughing.
Yes. I think the Goodship High Levels of Trust sailed way beyond the horizon years ago, lost at sea, sunk with all hands.
Still think Ofcom aka the state aka the government should not be regulating content, but neither should the state own and run a media empire that makes this absurd claim to impartiality because it’s not commercial
Hamas has a political wing as well as a military wing.
Hamas were elected to govern Gaza. They provide a civic administration.
The narrator of this “factual” BBC documentary is the 13 year old son of their agriculture minister.
It is a storm in a teacup whipped up by the usual Zionist attack dogs.
The BBC cowardly backed down.
Ofcom ruled that not revealing the child’s parent’s job was “materially misleading.” The BBC pulled the documentary within five days — after only 20 complaints.
Let that sink in: a film humanizing Palestinian children — bombed, starved, and orphaned — was censored, not for factual errors, but for who the child’s father was.
No such scrutiny is applied when Israeli soldiers, government spokespeople, or settlers’ families dominate Western screens without disclaimer.
This isn’t about “impartiality.” It’s about silencing Palestinian humanity.
Brilliant satire! It sounds just like tgem! Especially “attack dogs”, superb!
Correct description though. Your sense of what is normal has become distorted.
Your ‘thinking’ seems to have been negatively affected by the altitude there.
The only one’s “silencing Palestinian humanity” are Hamas. Demonstrably so. Not only have they been looting and stealing their aid, they are now executing them in streets.
But like the BBC, you just can’t get enough of their delicious bullshit, can you? Your glass is full of it.
Brilliant! Hamas is planning a second Holocaust, and you think they need humanising.
Jewish Israeli Holocaust specialists have stated that there can be no doubt that Israel has been committing a genocide.
Your comment looks rather cheap.
Even if Hamas is actually planning that, the chance of ever accomplishing it, given the absolute military superiority of Israel, are nil.
This is completely correct and unsensational.
I was planning to write something similar yesterday but then didn’t as I didn’t want to start this all-too-predictable discussion. But since you did it now:
So, the people who complained to Ofcom accused this child of having a father for want of anything else they could complain about regarding this film. How dare he!
After finding that the BBC’s reporting was biased OFCOM also analyzed the properties of water and found that it tends to be wet.
Ofcom found that the BBC hadn’t published information which wasn’t made available to it because the company it was partnering with had considered it outdated and irrelevant.
Of course, the sainted BBC would not have run it if they had known. Riiiight!
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.
As someone else put it: Everybody’s entitled to his own opinions but not to his own facts.
That’s not the only thing the dreaded Beeb have been found to mislead their audiences about with this programme. Basically, if you’re watching a documentary on BBC never just assume the translations are accurate;
”The failure to disclose the narrator of this documentary was a Hamas official’s son is of course an egregious breach of BBC’s ethics and standards.
Nonetheless, candidly, as a PhD student in linguistics/machine translation, I think that this deliberate mistranslation to hide genocidal antisemitism is the far graver issue with respect to this documentary. It is the single worst breach of professional translator ethics I have ever seen.
The fact that there has been barely a whisper within the interpreting/translating field about this is most telling. Most telling indeed.”
https://x.com/RachelMoiselle/status/1979133231355023475
Let’s have Jeremy Bowen come on screen to explain how the “mistakes” occured.
I hope what this guy is saying here is untrue. I’ve seen the horrific footage of Hamas executing men, reportedly they belonged to a rival clan, but there’s also reports they aren’t sticking with just the clan members but also their families are being murdered. Doubtful Hamas would film and upload such footage so there’s no actual evidence, just people saying this, so who knows? Obviously Hamas remain the biggest threat to Gazans, and I suppose going around killing anyone you accuse of being a ”collaborator”, or whatever, ( possibly including family members, by extension ) is certainly one effective way to keep people subdued, by terrorizing them;
“Yesterday Hamas executed a 5-year-old child claiming he was a ‘spy.’ When will the world ACT — and pressure Hamas to comply with Trump’s ceasefire plan?”
A brave Gazan civilian bears witness to Hamas atrocities.
https://x.com/PeaceComCenter/status/1979109301512732953
Israel seems to have several loose canons also, as they simply carried on killing Palestinians after the cease fire
If i remember, OFCOM were threatening GB News with being taken off the air for lesser breaches. Now it’s “You have committed the most serious breach that can be committed by a broadcaster – now say sorry to the class.”
He doesn’t look starved.
No surprise all BBC “mistakes” are one-way: anti western. Isn’t it time the DG resigned?
And they continue doing it… Apart from repeatedly calling it a “hostages exchange” earlier this week, they interviewed the crying sister of a Palestinian prisoner released after 20 years conveniently omitting to mention that he was in prison for ordering the suicide bombing that killed four in 2006.
I thought that the 13 year old was a child actor and had previously appeared with another actor playing his father. If I remember rightly that other actor was his uncle.
BBC, OFCOM , two words I cannot bear.
Another “mistake” by the appalling BBC. And once again OFCOM will do nothing. We’ll be told “lessons will be learned” and the BBC will carry on its merry way, doing its level best to destroy the UK.
Why anyone watches, let alone voluntarily funds it, is beyond me.
The BBC has been accused of “catastrophic failures”
And do the BBC care and will they carry on in the same vain?
Dead eyed little bugger, isn’t he? Already lost.