British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Violation of Media Rules, Declares UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the presenter of a film about the Gaza conflict was the offspring of a Hamas administrator, according to UK media regulator Ofcom.
An inquiry by the media regulator into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the documentary was "substantially inaccurate".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
Ofcom has ordered the broadcaster to air a evening statement about its findings.
"Given this constitutes a major infringement of our regulations, we are ordering the BBC to broadcast a statement of our findings against it on the BBC's second channel at 21:00, with a timing to be determined," it said.
'Risk to Erode Confidence'
The authority's report declared: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the documentary's omission to reveal that the voice's male guardian held a post in the Hamas-controlled government was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the public did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he shared.
"Credibility is at the center of the connection between a media organization and its public, notably for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the very considerable amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a documentary produced by the BBC about the Gaza conflict."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the boy's family links were revealed, and in July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it breached the corporation's editorial guidelines on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson stated: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the corporation's content standards on accuracy, which reflects regulation 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the date and wording are determined."
