British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the broadcaster to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of confidence that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
