British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
