British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
