BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
