British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
