BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a evening announcement about its findings.

"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Possibility to Undermine Trust'

The authority's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.

"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

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

The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."