BBC Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
