British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
