British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Trust'

The authority's report said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he presented.

"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from the online platform in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.

A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."