Ofcom open investigation into BBC Gaza documentary narrated by Hamas official’s son

He found that the production did breach the corporation’s rules around accuracy by not informing the audience that its teen narrator had family ties to terror.

However, he ruled that the existence of those links did not constitute a breach of the guidelines on the impartiality of its news-based and factual programming.

He also placed most of the blame for the error on the independent production company contracted by the BBC to make the documentary, Hoyo Films, yet cleared the firm of intentionally misleading the broadcaster.

Responding to the report, BBC Director-General Tim Davie said: “Peter Johnston’s report identifies a significant failing in relation to accuracy in this documentary. I thank him for his thorough work and I am sorry for this failing.

“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 corporation has now published an “Action Plan” to address the findings, including a commitment to issue new editorial guidance dealing with the use of narrators, as well as the translation of the Arabic word “Yehudi” literally as “Jews”, rather than “Zionists” or “Israelis.

And, seemingly addressing calls from some Jewish groups for those involved in the production at a senior level to be sacked, a BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC is taking fair, clear and appropriate action, based on the findings, to ensure accountability. We will not comment further on any individual confidential processes.”

Announcing the new investigation, an Ofcom spokesperson said: “The BBC has published its review into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. The review found that the programme breached one of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines on accuracy.

“Having examined the BBC's findings, we are launching an investigation under our rule which states that factual programmes must not materially mislead the audience.”

It comes after both the BBC and Hoyo suggested that the film could return to the iPlayer, after it was pulled from the streaming service in February when the scandal was uncovered.

Hoyo said it was “working closely with the BBC to see if we can find an appropriate way to bring back to iPlayer the stories of those featured in the programme”.

And a BBC spokesperson added: “Given the serious editorial breach identified in the production of Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone, we do not think it is appropriate to reinstate the programme in its current form to iPlayer.

"However, as we said at the time, it is important to tell the story of what is happening in Gaza...We remain keen to tell the stories of those featured in the documentary and will now explore the possibility of doing this through re-edited and re-versioned shorter films for archive on iPlayer.”