British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator

The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has directed the BBC to air a evening announcement about its findings.

"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.

"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.

A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."