BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
