BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog

The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.

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

The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".

The regulator has directed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its findings.

"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.

'Possibility to Undermine Trust'

The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.

"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.

"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."

The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."