British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator

The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a evening statement about its conclusions.

"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Undermine Credibility'

The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.

"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.

"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."