BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."