BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."