British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.

"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."