BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."