British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Broadcasting Regulations, Declares Ofcom
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the media regulator into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the BBC to transmit a evening statement about its conclusions.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air a message of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's male guardian held a role in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their assessment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the possibility to undermine the very considerable amounts of confidence that viewers would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was pulled from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions 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 aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in complete. We will adhere to the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
