British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart 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 damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."