British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance 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 Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
