BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Erode Credibility'

The authority's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared.

"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.

A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."