BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."