British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
