British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the broadcaster to air a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe determined that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
