British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
