British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
