British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
