British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
