British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to air a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a position in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the bond between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the online platform in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
