British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.

"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.

A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."