BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
