BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
