BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".

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

The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.

'Risk to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.

"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.

"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."