British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
