BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'

The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.

"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."