British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
