BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
