British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
