British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
