British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
