BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
