BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
