British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings 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 the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
