BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, States Ofcom
The British broadcaster committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to transmit a prime-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a serious breach of our code, we are ordering the BBC to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's announcement stated: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a broadcaster and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to damage the exceptionally strong degrees of credibility that viewers would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it violated the organization's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement 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 accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and language are determined."
