British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Infringement of Media Rules, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has ordered the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
