British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
