BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
