BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
