BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
