British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator

The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.

'Possibility to Damage Confidence'

The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.

"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."