BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator

The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Erode Credibility'

The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.

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

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

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

The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."