BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
