British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Undermine Trust'

The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.

"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."