British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.

"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."