🔗 Share this article

The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

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

The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.

"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Possibility to Undermine Trust'

The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.

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

"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.

A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings 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 reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.

"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."