British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
