British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
