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

The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".

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

The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Damage Credibility'

The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."

The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."