British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the presenter of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line 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 the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are confirmed."
