BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement 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 accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
