British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in line 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 factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
