British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
