British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
