British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, 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 expressed regret for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
