British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Documentary Ruled a 'Significant' Breach of Broadcasting Rules, Says UK Media Regulator
The British broadcaster was found to have committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by omitting to mention that the narrator of a programme about Gaza was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by Ofcom into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the film was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, noting there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The authority has directed the corporation to broadcast a evening announcement about its decisions.
"Given this constitutes a significant violation of our rules, we are instructing the BBC to transmit a statement of our determinations against it on the BBC's second channel at nine o'clock in the evening, with a date to be finalised," the statement read.
'Potential to Damage Trust'
The watchdog's announcement declared: "The inquiry we conducted determined that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a post in the Hamas-administered administration was substantially inaccurate.
"This implied that the viewers did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the narrator and the information he presented.
"Trust is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its public, especially for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This oversight had the risk to damage the significantly high amounts of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in February after the narrator's family links came to light, and in the month of July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it breached the corporation's journalistic standards on accuracy.
A representative for the broadcaster stated: "The Ofcom ruling is in agreement with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a major oversight in the programme in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We expressed regret for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in complete. We will adhere to the penalty as soon as the date and language are determined."
