British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
