BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
