British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
