BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
