BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
