BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the timing and language are determined."
