BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
