British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
