BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
