British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator

The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Damage Trust'

The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.

"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."