British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom

The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.

'Possibility to Undermine Trust'

The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.

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

"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."