British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator

The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.

"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."