BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
