British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
