British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator

The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

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

Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Damage Credibility'

The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.

"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision 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 accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."