British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
