BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator

The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

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

The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Credibility'

The authority's announcement said: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.

"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.

A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

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