British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
