BBC Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."