BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings 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 regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
