BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's report declared: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was materially misleading.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the center of the connection between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to erode the significantly high degrees of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the presenter's familial connections emerged, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry found it violated the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are determined."