British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
