British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
