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

The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Risk to Undermine Confidence'

The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he presented.

"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."