British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator

The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".

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

The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a message 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 Erode Confidence'

The authority's report stated: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he provided.

"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.

A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."