British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, States Ofcom

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.

"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he provided.

"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.

A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."