British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
