BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
