British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
