British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
