British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a evening statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."