BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

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

"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Credibility'

The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.

"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.

"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."