British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
