British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's statement declared: "Our probe found that the programme's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent served in a position in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."