British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Says Ofcom
The British broadcaster engaged in a "significant breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas representative, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the documentary was "significantly deceptive".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the corporation to broadcast a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our code, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a timing to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Potential to Undermine Trust'
The authority's report stated: "Our investigation determined that the documentary's lack of disclosure that the narrator's father served in a role in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the voice and the content he presented.
"Confidence is at the core of the relationship between a broadcaster and its public, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This error had the possibility to erode the very considerable levels of trust that the public would have invested in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Israel-Gaza war."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the broadcaster's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in line with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the authority's determination in its entirety. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
