British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
