BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator

The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air 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," it said.

'Risk to Damage Trust'

The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.

"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."