British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the film in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
