British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
