British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
