British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
