British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
