BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-run authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Trust is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
