BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom

The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Damage Credibility'

The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.

"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.

"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."