British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to transmit a prime-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
