British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority 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 already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the voice's male guardian held a position in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to damage the very considerable amounts of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the boy's personal associations came to light, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the directive as soon as the timing and language are determined."
