BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom

The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.

"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Credibility'

The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.

"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings 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 aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."