BBC Gaza Film Ruled a 'Serious' Infringement of Broadcasting Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The BBC was found to have committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the voice of a documentary about Gaza was the child of a Hamas administrator, as determined by regulatory body Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "materially misleading".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, saying 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 decisions.
"As this represents a major infringement of our rules, we are directing the broadcaster to broadcast a statement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a date to be finalised," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's announcement said: "The inquiry we conducted found that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's parent served in a post in the Hamas-administered government was significantly deceptive.
"It meant that the public did not have vital facts which may have been very significant to their judgment of the voice and the details he provided.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a public service broadcaster such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to damage the exceptionally strong amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was pulled from iPlayer in last February after the narrator's personal associations were revealed, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it violated the corporation's content policies on truthfulness.
A corporation official stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the findings of Peter Johnston's review, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on factual correctness, which reflects clause 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We have apologised for this and we agree with the regulator's ruling in full. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and wording are confirmed."
