British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom

The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.

"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Potential to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."