British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing 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 probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a evening statement about its decisions.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.

'Possibility to Erode Credibility'

The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.

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

"This error had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.

A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."