British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
