BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Says Ofcom

The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Potential to Damage Credibility'

The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he provided.

"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This error had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."