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- By Heather Burton
- 04 Sep 2026
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
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