BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
