BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
