BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
