British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Media Regulations, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the narrator of a film about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by British broadcasting authority 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 head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its conclusions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our regulations, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC2 at 21:00, with a date to be finalised," it said.
'Possibility to Erode Trust'
The regulator's statement said: "Our probe determined that the programme's lack of disclosure that the narrator's parent occupied a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its audience, especially for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This failing had the risk to erode the exceptionally strong levels of trust that the public would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was withdrawn from the online platform in February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in this past July an internal BBC review determined it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the date and language are confirmed."
