British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the corporation to transmit a evening announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Confidence'
The regulator's statement declared: "Our investigation found that the documentary's omission to reveal that the presenter's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that viewers would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
