British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator

The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".

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

Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Credibility'

The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.

"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 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 comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."