BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog

The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".

Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.

'Possibility to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.

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

"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."