BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
