British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.

"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.

'Possibility to Damage Credibility'

The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.

"This implied 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 media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."