BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
