British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom

The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Erode Confidence'

The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.

"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.

"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."