British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Ruled a 'Major' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC committed a "major breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the programme was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the voice and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results 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 aligns with regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and wording are determined."