British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.

"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Damage Confidence'

The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.

"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."