British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Says Ofcom

The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Risk to Undermine Credibility'

The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.

"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."