British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to undermine the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
