BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement 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 accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
