British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
