British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," it said.

'Possibility to Erode Credibility'

The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.

"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."