British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog

The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An investigation by the media regulator 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, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".

The regulator has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its conclusions.

"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.

'Potential to Undermine Confidence'

The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.

"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.

"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."

The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."