British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a evening statement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The regulator's announcement stated: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the very considerable levels of credibility that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from iPlayer in February after the boy's personal associations emerged, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
