BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our rules, we are ordering the corporation to broadcast a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's report stated: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong amounts of credibility that viewers would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links emerged, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it breached the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are determined."
