British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, stating there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the corporation to broadcast a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement said: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the relationship between a media organization and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review found it infringed the organization's content policies on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the conclusions 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 aligns with regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and language are finalised."
