British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Ofcom

The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.

'Potential to Erode Trust'

The authority's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.

"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."