British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom

The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".

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

The authority has directed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.

'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'

The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.

"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.

"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing 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 agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."