BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator

The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has instructed the BBC to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Trust'

The regulator's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.

"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."