British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
