BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
