British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Erode Trust'

The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."