British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
