British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
