BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
