BBC’s documentary on Gaza committed ‘serious breach’ of broadcasting rules, Ofcom says

UK media regulator Ofcom said on Friday that a BBC documentary about children’s lives in Gaza had committed a “serious breach” of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the 13-year-old narrator was the son of an official in the agriculture ministry of the Strip’s government.

It said the failure to disclose that Abdullah al-Yazouri’s father was a deputy agriculture minister was “materially misleading”.

“It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided,” Ofcom said in a statement.

Ofcom regulator said it received 20 complaints about the documentary, entitled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which was removed by the BBC from its website after five days of its broadcast in February.

“As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it,” Ofcom said.