BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, 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 complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
