BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
