BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
