British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "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 accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
