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

The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

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

The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Undermine Confidence'

The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.

"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."