British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
