British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Serious' Infringement of Media Rules, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The public service broadcaster engaged in a "serious breach" of broadcasting rules by not revealing that the voice of a film about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas representative, as determined by UK media regulator Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the programme Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found that the film was "substantially inaccurate".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had already issued an apology, saying there had been "a significant failing in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has ordered the broadcaster to air a peak-time announcement about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our rules, we are ordering the broadcaster to transmit a message of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Erode Confidence'
The watchdog's statement stated: "Our investigation concluded that the film's omission to reveal that the voice's father occupied a post in the Hamas-run government was significantly deceptive.
"This implied that the public did not have critical information which may have been very significant to their judgment of the presenter and the content he provided.
"Trust is at the heart of the bond between a media organization and its audience, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the BBC.
"This failing had the risk to undermine the exceptionally strong degrees of trust that the public would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was pulled from the online platform in February after the presenter's familial connections came to light, and in the month of July an corporation's own inquiry determined it infringed the corporation's content policies on factual correctness.
A representative for the broadcaster commented: "The Ofcom ruling is in line with the conclusions of the corporation's inquiry, that there was a serious error in the film in relation to the BBC's Editorial Guidelines on factual correctness, which corresponds to clause 2.2 of the regulator's media standards.
"We have apologised for this and we comply with the authority's determination in full. We will comply with the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."