BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time statement about its decisions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to air a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our investigation found that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to undermine the exceptionally strong levels of credibility that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
