British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit 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 finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
