BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
