British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
