British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Significant' Violation of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Potential to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a role in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the presenter and the details he provided.
"Confidence is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in full. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
