British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator

The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.

"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

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