British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.

"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.

'Possibility to Erode Credibility'

The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.

"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.

"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

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