British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
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 found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."