British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
