BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
