British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
