BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are finalised."
