British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
