British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator

The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.

"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Risk to Damage Trust'

The watchdog's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.

"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."