British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
