British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom

The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has directed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.

"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.

"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.

"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.

A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."