BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
