British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a broadcaster and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
