British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
