British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
