British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about Gaza was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its audience, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of confidence that the public 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 boy's personal associations emerged, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 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 follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
