BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
