British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results 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 aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
