BBC Gaza Programme Ruled a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
