BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
