BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."