BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog

The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC 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 peak-time declaration about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.

'Potential to Erode Confidence'

The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.

"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.

"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."