BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a evening statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform 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 found it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
