British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
