British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Regulations, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza situation was the child of a Hamas official, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our rules, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the narrator and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the possibility to undermine the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and language are finalised."
