BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
