BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
