British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
