British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".

The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Trust'

The authority's report declared: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.

"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.

"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."