🔗 Share this article

The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.

An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".

The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".

The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.

'Possibility to Erode Trust'

The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.

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

"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."

The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.

A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."