BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
