British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be determined," the statement read.
'Risk to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he shared.
"Confidence is at the center of the bond between a television network and its viewers, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that audiences would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in full. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
