British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Significant' Breach of Media Standards, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a significant failing in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the BBC to transmit a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to transmit a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report said: "Our probe concluded that the programme's failure to disclose that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a media organization and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the boy's familial connections emerged, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment found it violated the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in full. We will comply with the penalty as soon as the date and wording are finalised."
