BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
