British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
