British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
