BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
