British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its audience, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
