British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.

"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he presented.

"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."