BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."