British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
