British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Ofcom

The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.

"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."