BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to air a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson 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 broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
