BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
