BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."