BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator

The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".

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

The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Undermine Confidence'

The regulator's report declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.

"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."