British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
