BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

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

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

The authority has ordered the corporation to air a evening announcement about its decisions.

"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.

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

"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret 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 determined."