British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
