🔗 Share this article

The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.

An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".

The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.

'Potential to Undermine Trust'

The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.

"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.

"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.

"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.

"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."