BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
