British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "Our investigation found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
