British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".

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

Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.

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

"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."