British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
