British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into the programme 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 significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Erode Credibility'

The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.

"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.

"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."