British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's parent occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its viewers, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
