BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Rules, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the offspring of a Hamas representative, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The watchdog's report said: "Our probe found that the film's lack of disclosure that the presenter's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a television network and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high amounts of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry found it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings 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 corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
