British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
