BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
