British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Deemed a 'Significant' Breach of Media Regulations, States UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the voice of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had previously apologised, noting there had been "a serious error in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has instructed the broadcaster to air a peak-time declaration about its findings.
"As this represents a significant violation of our regulations, we are directing the corporation to air a message of our findings against it on BBC Two at 21:00, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The regulator's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian occupied a post in the Hamas-controlled government was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he provided.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the very considerable degrees of confidence that viewers would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Israel-Gaza war."
The film was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in last February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's editorial guidelines on factual correctness.
A corporation official stated: "The regulator's decision is in line with the conclusions of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in complete. We will follow the directive as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
