British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
