BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
