British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Erode Trust'

The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.

"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."