BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"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.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
