BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."