BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
