BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
