BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
