British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The regulator's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
