BBC Gaza Film Deemed a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Regulations, Declares UK Media Regulator
The public service broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of industry standards by failing to disclose that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza conflict was the son of a Hamas official, as ruled by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "significantly deceptive".
The BBC's director general had already issued an apology, stating there had been "a serious error in relation to truthfulness".
Ofcom has instructed the broadcaster to transmit a evening announcement about its decisions.
"As this represents a serious breach of our regulations, we are instructing the BBC to air 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 determined," it said.
'Potential to Undermine Confidence'
The watchdog's statement said: "The inquiry we conducted concluded that the film's failure to disclose that the presenter's father held a position in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have essential details which may have been very significant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he presented.
"Confidence is at the heart of the bond between a broadcaster and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This oversight had the potential to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The film was removed from the online platform in the month of February after the narrator's personal associations came to light, and in the month of July an internal BBC review determined it violated the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A BBC spokesperson said: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the corporation's content standards on truthfulness, which reflects clause 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom's decision in its entirety. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are finalised."
