BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination 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 factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
