British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings 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 regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are determined."
