British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Breach of Media Standards, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a post in the Hamas-run government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he shared.
"Confidence is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will follow the penalty as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
