BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
