British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, States 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 documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the corporation to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-run government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in accordance with the findings 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 clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
