British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."