BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling 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 corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
