British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
