British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly 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 audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
