BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to erode the very considerable amounts of trust that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
