BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".

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

The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.

"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.

"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."