British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom

The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

The authority has instructed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its findings.

"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.

'Possibility to Damage Trust'

The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.

"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."