British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
