BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Violation of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has instructed the BBC to transmit a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are instructing the corporation to broadcast a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the statement read.
'Possibility to Damage Credibility'
The regulator's announcement declared: "Our probe determined that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a position in the Hamas-controlled authority was substantially inaccurate.
"It meant that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he shared.
"Trust is at the core of the relationship between a television network and its public, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was pulled from the online platform in last February after the presenter's personal associations came to light, and in July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which corresponds to 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 schedule and language are confirmed."
