British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
