British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The authority's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the film's lack of disclosure that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"It meant that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This failing had the possibility to damage the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are determined."
