British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled 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, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
