BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to 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 adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
