British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a evening declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the broadcaster's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
