British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing 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 accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
