British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's report said: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "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 corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
