BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
