British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the bond between a television network and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections came to light, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it infringed the organization's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
