British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
