BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
