British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
