British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
