BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".

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

The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.

'Risk to Damage Confidence'

The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he provided.

"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."