British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable levels of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
