BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
