BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
