British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
