British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
