BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom

The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, 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 documentary was "significantly deceptive".

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has directed the corporation to air a evening statement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.

"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

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

The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."