BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Media Rules, States UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the presenter of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to air a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the details he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a television network and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the organization's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
