🔗 Share this article

The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.

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

The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".

The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.

"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.

'Risk to Erode Confidence'

The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.

"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.

"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."

The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.

A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.

"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."