BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
