BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded 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 directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public 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 presenter's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
