British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Ofcom

The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".

Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.

"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," it said.

'Possibility to Damage Confidence'

The authority's report declared: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.

"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.

"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.

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 documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."