British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom

The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".

The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.

'Potential to Damage Trust'

The regulator's statement said: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.

"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.

"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.

A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

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