BBC Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, States UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the BBC to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
