BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator

The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The authority's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.

"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."