British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
