BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
