British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
