BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Potential to Damage Credibility'

The authority's report said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.

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

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

"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."