British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Programme Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by failing to disclose that the voice of a film about Gaza was the son of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to accuracy".
The authority has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time announcement about its conclusions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at 9pm, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Damage Credibility'
The authority's report said: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the programme's omission to reveal that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-controlled government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the audience did not have vital facts which may have been extremely pertinent to their assessment of the voice and the content he provided.
"Credibility is at the center of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the BBC.
"This error had the risk to undermine the very considerable degrees of trust that audiences would have put in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The programme was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it violated the broadcaster's journalistic standards on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the conclusions of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
