British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
