BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to air a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's statement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
