British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
