British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme 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 truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing 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 date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
