BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
