BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
