British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Rules, Says Ofcom
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had previously apologised, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered government was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
