British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
