BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
