BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
