BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
