BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
