BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".

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

Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Trust'

The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.

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

"This error had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."