British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
