BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator

The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its decisions.

"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Possibility to Damage Credibility'

The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared.

"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."