British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
