British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our code, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe determined that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's parent held a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
