British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "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 corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
