British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC 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 administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
