British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our probe concluded that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of confidence that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
