British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be finalised," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that viewers would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
