British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
