British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Significant' Infringement of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to air a prime-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are directing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a date to be determined," the statement read.
'Potential to Erode Trust'
The watchdog's report declared: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent held a position in the Hamas-administered administration was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its viewers, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the possibility to damage the very considerable degrees of credibility that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was pulled from iPlayer in February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it breached the corporation's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."