British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."
