British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
