BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to air a evening declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Credibility'
The regulator's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to erode the significantly high amounts of confidence that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in last February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
