British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be confirmed," it said.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's announcement declared: "Our probe found that the film's omission to reveal that the narrator's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was materially misleading.
"This implied that the audience did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he shared.
"Trust is at the center of the relationship between a media organization and its public, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the potential to damage the significantly high degrees of trust that the public would have put in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment concluded it infringed the broadcaster's content policies on factual correctness.
A corporation official said: "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 BBC's Editorial Guidelines on accuracy, which corresponds to regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the schedule and wording are finalised."
