British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
