British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom

The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Damage Trust'

The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

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