British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
