British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
Ofcom has ordered the BBC to air a evening declaration about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are ordering the broadcaster to broadcast a announcement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Erode Trust'
The authority's report said: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent occupied a post in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their assessment of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This oversight had the risk to undermine the significantly high levels of confidence that viewers would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an internal BBC review concluded it infringed the broadcaster's journalistic standards on truthfulness.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
