BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
