British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's father served in a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of confidence that audiences would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
