British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
