British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Infringement of Media Standards, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the BBC to broadcast a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are directing the BBC to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the possibility to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it breached the broadcaster's content policies on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
