BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
