British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom

The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".

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

The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.

"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Potential to Damage Trust'

The regulator's report said: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.

"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.

"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."