British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
