🔗 Share this article

The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".

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

The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.

"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.

"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.

"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.

"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."

The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.

A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

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