British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Erode Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
