British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
