British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by omitting to mention that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in February after the presenter's family links emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which aligns with clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
