BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
