British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
