BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
