British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
