BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line 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 the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
