British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
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 serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are finalised."
