British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
