BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
