BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
