British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Damage Trust'

The regulator's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.

"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.

"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement 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 factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."