BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster 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 corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
