British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Confidence'
The authority's announcement stated: "Our investigation determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's male guardian occupied a role in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the presenter's family links came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the conclusions 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 clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
