British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Damage Credibility'

The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.

"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."

The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."