BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom

The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.

"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Credibility'

The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.

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

"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."