BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
