British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
