British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Ofcom
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The BBC's director general had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The regulator has ordered the BBC to broadcast a peak-time statement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are instructing the corporation to air a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the statement read.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The watchdog's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, notably for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of credibility that audiences would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the organization's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A corporation official commented: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
