British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator

The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".

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

The authority has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.

'Possibility to Erode Credibility'

The regulator's report said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.

"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."