BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
