British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Deemed a 'Major' Breach of Broadcasting Standards, States Broadcasting Watchdog
The British broadcaster committed a "significant breach" of broadcasting rules by omitting to mention that the presenter of a documentary about the Gaza situation was the son of a Hamas official, according to British broadcasting authority Ofcom.
An probe by the broadcasting watchdog into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has found 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 accuracy".
Ofcom has directed the BBC to air a peak-time declaration about its decisions.
"Since this amounts to a significant violation of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to air a announcement of our conclusions against it on the BBC's second channel at 9pm, with a schedule to be determined," the regulator stated.
'Possibility to Undermine Trust'
The authority's statement declared: "Our probe found that the programme's failure to disclose that the voice's father held a role in the Hamas-run administration was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the audience did not have essential details which may have been highly relevant to their judgment of the narrator and the details he presented.
"Credibility is at the core of the connection between a media organization and its viewers, notably for a national broadcasting corporation such as the public broadcaster.
"This error had the potential to damage the very considerable degrees of confidence that the public would have invested in a BBC factual programme about the Gaza conflict."
The programme was removed from the online platform in February after the narrator's familial connections came to light, and in this past July an corporation's own inquiry concluded it infringed the organization's editorial guidelines on truthfulness.
A corporation official said: "The authority's determination is in agreement with the results of the internal assessment, that there was a major oversight in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on truthfulness, which aligns with Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We expressed regret for this and we agree with the authority's determination in full. We will follow the penalty as soon as the timing and language are confirmed."
