British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
