BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
