British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom

The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

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

Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.

"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."