British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Damage Confidence'

The authority's report said: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.

"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.

"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."