The BBC has breached its own editorial guidelines on accuracy by failing to disclose that the narrator of a Gaza documentary was the son of a Hamas government official, according to an internal review published today.
The corporation’s comprehensive investigation examined “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone”, which featured 13-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri narrating about children’s lives in the conflict zone. The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after it emerged that Abdullah’s father, Ayman Al-Yazouri, serves as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture.
Peter Johnston, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews, concluded that whilst the programme breached editorial guideline 3.3.17 on accuracy for misleading audiences, there were no other violations of BBC guidelines, including impartiality standards.
“Significant Failing” Identified
BBC director-general Tim Davie apologised for the breach, describing it as a “significant failing” in relation to accuracy. “I thank him for his thorough work and I am sorry for this failing,” Davie stated. “We will now take action on two fronts – fair, clear and appropriate actions to ensure proper accountability and the immediate implementation of steps to prevent such errors being repeated.”
The review, which examined over 5,000 documents and 150 hours of filmed material from the 10-month production period, found that three members of independent production company Hoyo Films knew about the father’s position when the programme first aired. However, no one at the BBC was aware of this information at the time.
“Regardless of how the significance or otherwise of the narrator’s father’s position was judged, the audience should have been informed about this,” Johnston’s report stated, describing the background information as “critical.”
Production Company Responsibility
The BBC determined that whilst Hoyo Films bears “most responsibility for this failure”, the corporation also shares blame for insufficient editorial checks. The report criticised BBC staff for not being “sufficiently proactive” with initial editorial checks and for a “lack of critical oversight” of unanswered or partially answered questions.
According to the review, a BBC editorial policy advisor had questioned Hoyo weeks before broadcast about whether “due diligence” had been done on the boy’s Hamas connections. “I’m sure it has but critics may raise something,” the advisor had noted in an internal message.
Hoyo Films issued a statement taking the findings “extremely seriously” and apologising for the mistake. The company added it was pleased the report found “no evidence of inappropriate influence on the content of the documentary from any third party.”
Industry Reaction and Criticism
The controversy sparked fierce criticism from industry figures when it first emerged. Danny Cohen, former controller of BBC One, accused his former employer of a “shocking failure” that had caused a “major crisis for its reputation.
The BBC appears to have given an hour of prime-time coverage to the son of a senior member of the Hamas terrorist group,” Cohen wrote at the time. Either they were not aware of the terrorist links because they did not carry out the most basic journalistic checks or the BBC did know and misled audiences about the family’s deep involvement with terrorism.
BBC chair Samir Shah later told MPs that people “weren’t doing their job” when it came to oversight of the production, describing it as “a dagger to the heart of the BBC claim to be impartial and to be trustworthy.
New Editorial Controls
In response to the findings, the BBC has implemented an action plan including new editorial guidance on narrator scrutiny for contested current affairs programmes. The corporation is introducing enhanced editorial controls with “First Gate” and “Final Gate” processes to prevent similar failures.
The BBC will also create a new director role for long-form news content, with the position to be advertised within the next week. This role will have strategic leadership of the news division’s long-form output.
BBC News CEO Deborah Turness acknowledged the “significant mistake” whilst emphasising the importance of the stories being told. “At the heart of this programme were powerful and important stories that need to be told,” she stated.
Future of the Documentary
The BBC confirmed that “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” will not be restored to iPlayer in its current form. However, amid criticism that the corporation is censoring stories from Gaza, it plans to re-edit the documentary into shorter films for archive on iPlayer.
The corporation has no current or future planned commissions with Hoyo Films, though it is exploring the possibility of re-versioning content from the documentary.
The review also found that a fee of £795 was paid for the narrator’s contribution, paid to his adult sister, which Johnston deemed was not “outside the range of what might be reasonable in the context.”
Wider Editorial Concerns
The controversy has highlighted broader tensions within the BBC regarding its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Earlier this year, the corporation also pulled another Gaza documentary, “Doctors Under Attack”, which subsequently aired on Channel 4.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy had questioned why no one at the BBC had been fired over the incident, reflecting political pressure on the corporation to demonstrate accountability.
Johnston’s report concluded that using a 13-year-old child as narrator for this programme was “not appropriate”, particularly given that he was reading a script written by programme makers that included facts about Gaza’s history and geopolitics.
The BBC Board stated: “Nothing is more important than trust and transparency in our journalism. We welcome the actions the executive are taking to avoid this failing being repeated in the future.”
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Image Credit:
Photo of BBC logo on The Forum, Norwich by Kake, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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