British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public 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 core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
