BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
