British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.

"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Possibility to Damage Trust'

The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.

"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.

"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.

A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."