BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review found it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."
