BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.

'Potential to Erode Confidence'

The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.

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

"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."