BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
