BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
