BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."