BBC Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
