British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, States Ofcom
The BBC engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had previously apologised, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
The authority has directed the corporation to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a statement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Risk to Erode Credibility'
The authority's statement stated: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the presenter's male guardian served in a position in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to undermine the significantly high levels of credibility that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in line 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 reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the schedule and wording are confirmed."
