BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's statement stated: "Our probe found that the programme's lack of disclosure that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
