BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised 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 finalised."
