British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father occupied a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from iPlayer in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
