BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to air a statement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
