BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
