BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
