British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
