British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
