British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Damage Trust'

The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.

"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.

"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."