British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.

'Possibility to Undermine Trust'

The watchdog's report said: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.

"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."