British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom

The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.

'Risk to Undermine Confidence'

The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.

"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."