British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
