BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Says Ofcom

The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a evening statement about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'

The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.

"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.

"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."