British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results 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 regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
