BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.

'Possibility to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.

"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This error had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.

A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."