British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
