British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Considered a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The BBC engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has instructed the corporation to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on BBC2 at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation found that the film's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a position in the Hamas-run administration was substantially inaccurate.
"Consequently that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the center of the bond between a television network and its audience, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in accordance with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
