British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, Declares Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of industry standards by not revealing that the presenter of a documentary about Gaza was the son of a Hamas administrator, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has determined that the film was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a major oversight in relation to accuracy".
The regulator has ordered the corporation to transmit a prime-time statement about its findings.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our code, we are directing the BBC to transmit a message of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a schedule to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Damage Trust'
The authority's statement said: "Our probe found that the film's failure to disclose that the voice's male guardian served in a post in the Hamas-controlled administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the presenter and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the connection between a television network and its audience, especially for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the significantly high degrees of credibility that the public would have invested in a factual film from the broadcaster about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A corporation official said: "The regulator's decision is in accordance with the results of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the schedule and language are finalised."
