British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom

The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.

'Risk to Undermine Confidence'

The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.

"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."