BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a post 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 judgment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
