British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator

The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

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

Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.

'Risk to Undermine Credibility'

The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.

"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 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 follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."