British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Risk to Undermine Confidence'

The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.

A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."