BBC Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
