British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
