British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
