British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
