British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
