British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
