BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
