British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
