British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered authority was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the risk to erode the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
