BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
