British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.

"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The watchdog's report said: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.

"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster 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The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

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