BBC Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Breach of Media Regulations, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster was found to have committed a "serious breach" of media regulations by not revealing that the voice of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas official, as determined by British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An investigation by the media regulator into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The head of the BBC had earlier expressed regret, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the broadcaster to transmit a evening declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a major infringement of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our conclusions against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Risk to Undermine Credibility'
The regulator's announcement said: "Our probe concluded that the documentary's failure to disclose that the narrator's parent held a role in the Hamas-run authority was materially misleading.
"Consequently that the audience did not have critical information which may have been extremely pertinent to their evaluation of the presenter and the information he presented.
"Credibility is at the heart of the relationship between a television network and its public, particularly for a national broadcasting corporation such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This error had the potential to damage the significantly high levels of confidence that the public would have placed in a factual film from the broadcaster about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was withdrawn from iPlayer in last February after the presenter's personal associations emerged, and in July an corporation's own inquiry determined it violated the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on factual correctness, which reflects regulation 2.2 of the authority's broadcasting regulations.
"We expressed regret for this and we accept the authority's determination in complete. We will comply with the directive as soon as the timing and wording are determined."
