BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
