British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
