BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
