BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
