British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
