BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Says Ofcom

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

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

The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.

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

"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."