British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high levels of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
