BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a evening announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
