BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
