British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a post 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 voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
