BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
