British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our investigation concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the date and wording are determined."
