BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."