British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's report stated: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a role in the Hamas-run administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high levels of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
