BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".

The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.

"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Damage Trust'

The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.

"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided.

"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."