British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
